Ponencias Invitadas.-5. Ecosystemic approaches to land degradation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Land degradation is recognized as the main outcome of desertification. However available procedures for its assessment are still unsatisfactory because are often too costly for surveying large areas and rely on specific components of the degradation process without being able to integrate them in a unique process. One of the objectives of DeSurvey project is designing and implementing operational procedures for desertification surveillance, including land degradation. A strategic report was compiled and reproduced here for selecting the most appropriate approaches to the project conditions. The report focuses on using attributes of ecosystem maturity as a natural way to integrate the different drivers of land degradation in simple indices. The review surveys different families of attributes concerned with water and energy fluxes through the ecosystem, its capacity to sustain biomass and net primary productivity, and its capacity to structure the space. Finally, some concusions are presented about the choice criteria of the different approaches in the framne of operational applications.