Land Degradation & Development

Land degradation is recognized as a key issue for world conservation, as land is the basis of all human food, livestock feed, fiber, fuel and many functions beyond productive functions. The complex relationship between human activities and the land degradation processes is explored in this book, with a particular emphasis on the different habitat types such as forest, woodlands and drylands. Each of these habitat types supports a different range of functions and has a different vulnerability to the various degradation pressures. Human activities puts competing demands on the land for not only production through unsustainable agriculture output needs, but also for large human population needs of infrastructure, recreation facilities, waste disposal and industrial development, damaging further the resilient and self-renewable land. Soil has vast buffering capacity, but only a limited soil remediation functions can happen in the limited timespan that these human activities are able to provide for the vast growth and expansion of human population.