In a new book he co-edited, and as organizer of a new ARIDnet research network that will study desertification worldwide, James F. Reynolds is seeking to better explain the interconnected factors that cause sensitive dry land environments to sometimes degrade to points of no return.
"The problem is that a single word, desertification, is used to characterize a myriad of issues and in doing so is the root of so many controversies," the Duke biology professor said in an interview. "Those issues range from poverty in rural Africa and shrubs encroaching into grasslands in southern New Mexico to dust storms in China."
He noted that the United Nations established a convention in 1994 to target what it termed "poverty, drought and food insecurity in dry land countries experiencing desertification." However, "the variety of spins put on what is meant by 'desertification' differ widely in the scientific and policy communities," Reynolds said.
Global Desertification, Do Humans Cause Deserts?, a new book he edited with Australian ecologist D. Mark Stafford Smith, notes that dry lands cover about 40 percent of Earth's surface and are home to about one-fifth of the world's population. Despite their aridity, dry lands support a variety of agriculture, ranging from livestock grazing to crop cultivation with irrigation.
At the heart of the desertification controversy is the fact that natural vegetation in many areas has been eliminated or severely reduced through various human activities, wrote the authors. Soils are also being eroded at accelerated rates.
Because of this, some see desertification as essentially a human-caused problem affecting humans. Critics of this view argue that humans are just one of many concur
Contact: Monte Basgall