Title: ESTIMATING THE POTENTIAL FOR INCREASED DESERTIFICATION WITH RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS
Abstract: Desert ecosystems are fragile. Arid lands easily deteriorate under modest impact, and the process of man-induced decrease in their stability is called desertification. With the assumption that the interactive effect of stress factors is additive, an index of instability for a desert ecosystem is greater than for a mesic ecosystem by more than two orders of magnitude. An index of instability is calculated by multiplying together relative values of all the stress factors, with 1.00 considered as no stress and lower values for increasing stress. The resulting index of instability is expressed as the negative log10. An index of instability of 0.0 indicates no stress, and a value of 1.0 indicates 10% of maximum stability. Costly land reclamation often results in only a relatively small decrease in the index of instability. This is because only part of the stress factors is addressed and corrected in most land reclamation; other stresses remain unchanged or could become worse. When errors are made or when unforseen and man-made stresses are superimposed on a reclaimed land area, the additive nature of these stresses, with other stresses, can result in the index of instability being greater than that of the original unreclaimed land. Desertification has resulted. Developers of new reclamation projects need to evaluate all possible stresses and calculate an index of stability with and without the proposed reclamation for evaluation in order to prepare to avoid serious errors that lead to desertification.
Publication Year: 1989
Publication Date: 1989-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 3
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