Abstract
Land degradation in drylands is the process in which undesirable conditions emerge due to human and natural causes. Despite the particularly deleterious effects of degradation, and it’s potentially irreversible nature, regional assessments have provided conflicting extents, rates, and severities of degradation, both globally and regionally. Current monitoring of degradation relies upon the detection of green, photosynthetically active parts of vegetation (e.g., leaves). Less is known, however, about the effect of degradation on the non-photosynthetic components of vegetation (e.g., wood, stems, leaf litter) and the relationship between photosynthetic vegetation (PV), non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV), and bare soil under degraded conditions (BS). The major objective of the study was to evaluate regional patterns of fractional cover (i.e., PV, NPV, BS) under degraded and non-degraded NPP conditions in a managed rangeland in north Queensland, Australia. Homogenous environmental conditions were identified and each of NPP, PV, NPV, and BS were scaled according to their potential, reference values. We found a strong spatial and temporal correlation between scaled NPP with both scaled PV and scaled BS. Drastic differences were also found for PV and BS between degraded and non-degraded conditions. NPV displayed similarity to both PV and BS, however no clear relationship was found for NPV in all areas, irrespective of degradation conditions.
Highlights
Land degradation is the process where undesirable conditions emerge due to human and natural causes [1,2,3]
Differences in photosynthetic vegetation (PV) cover and net primary productivity (NPP) can be expected since the calibration of PV in Australian rangelands [37] involved the principal component of NPP [48]
The primary objective of this study was to determine the utility of vegetation fractional cover to characterize instances of human-induced degradation across a dryland landscape
Summary
Land degradation is the process where undesirable conditions emerge due to human and natural causes [1,2,3]. Prince [12], for example, states “desertification [degradation] refers to the process by which changed biogeophysical conditions emerge owing to human actions that cannot be supported by the resource base and that will not quickly return to their former, non-desertified conditions, either naturally or by application or minor management practices”. This definition serves to distinguish drought, in which vegetation and edaphic
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