Page 115 - Çevre Şehir ve İklim Dergisi İngilizce - Özel Sayı

Zehra Kavakli Karataş

a slow process, it is actually a process that accelerates rapidly over time and
its effects appear more intense. Action to combat desertification is required
urgently before the rehabilitation processes rise beyond practical possibility
(Glantz et al., 1983).
Desertification is the ecological degradation that occurs when an
economically and biologically productive land becomes less productive
over time. This process results in soil erosion, reduced productivity and loss
of vegetation cover (Türkeş, 1990). According to UNFCCC, desertification
is a process that occurs with the combined effect of physical, biological,
political, social, cultural and economic factors that lead to land degradation
in arid and semi-arid regions because of climate change and human activities
(Türkeş, 2012). Ding et al. (1998) defines desertification as a decrease in the
productivity of biological life over time. The United Nations Convention to
Combat Desertification (1999) defines desertification as the degradation of
land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas as a result of various factors,
including climate change and human activities.
According to FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), desertification
is the extension and intensification of land degradation as a result of human
impacts or natural processes. As a result, there is a decline in biomass, pasture
capacities for animals, production and therefore welfare for people, and
the biological production power of the degraded ecosystem is lost and the
resulting degradation and regression is desertification (FAO/UNESCO 1977;
Görcelioğlu, 1992). The findings by Verón et al. (2018) indicate that two main
definitions coexist in recent literature: “desertification is land degradation in
arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas caused by a variety of factors, including
climate changes and human activities” and ‘desertification is a permanent
reduction in the capacity of ecosystems to provide services over long periods
of time’. Also, desertification is defined as a process caused by climate change
and unsustainable land management practices (Pourghasemi et al., 2019). Duan
et al. (2019) define desertification, particularly in China, as the process by which
excessive human economic activity disrupts the ecological balance of arid and
semi-arid lands, resulting in the formation of blowing sand and sand dunes.
When many definitions of desertification are considered, it is clear that various
factors, especially climate change and human factors, lead to desertification.
According to Al-Kulabi (2018), desertification is the land degradation that
occurs in arid areas and deserts are defined as naturally-emerging arid regions
(Al-Kulabi, 2022). Desertification is the process that can transform a fertile land
into degraded land or wasteland (Neary, 2018; Bhatnagar, 2022). Moreover, as
many references mention, desertification results from the fragility of dryland
ecosystems. In this context, ecosystems lose their productivity and regeneration
capabilities under the extreme pressure of human use (Chouhan, 2018).

102 Journal of Environment, Urban and Climate