All publications and documents

Desertification, land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid regions, is a global environmental problem. Accurate assessment of the status, change, and trend of desertification will be instrumental in developing global actions to prevent and eradicate the problem. As one of the most seriously affected countries, China has made great efforts to combat desertification. Although…

Overgrazing by increasing numbers of livestock in the Horqin Sandy Land of Inner Mongolia, China, has led to extensive degradation of the region's sandy steppes. Degraded grasslands are generally classified into four main types: fixed (least degradation), semi-fixed (light degradation), semi-shifting (moderate degradation) and shifting (severe degradation) sandy lands, representing four stages of…

It is widely recognized that desertification is a serious threat to arid and semiarid environments—which cover 40% of the global land surface and are populated by approximately 1 billion humans. Given the potential relevance of this problem, it is surprising that there is no consensus on the proper way to assess the desertification status of a piece of land. During the last 70 years, conflicting…

Vulnerability to climate change and other hazards constitutes a critical set of interactions between society and environment. As transitional economies emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union, the republics of Central Asia are particularly vulnerable due to (1) physical geography (which dominated by temperate deserts and semi-deserts), (2) relative underdevelopment resulting from an…

Rangelands of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP), although sparsely populated and contributing little to China's overall economy, play an important environmental role throughout Asia. They contain high biodiversity values and can also potentially provide China with a source of cultural and geographic variety in the future. Chinese government reports paint a gloomy picture, considering vast…

From the late 1970s to the present, a large-scale afforestation program called the “Three Norths Forest Shelterbelt” program was carried out to combat desertification and control dust storms in China. However, few detailed and systemic assessments have evaluated its success despite the huge investment in the program, its long-term, the extensive area covered by the program, and the importance of…