Abstract
Land degradation neutrality (LDN) is defined as a "state whereby the amount and quality of land resources nec-essary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security remain stable or increase within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems". The baseline is expressed as the initial (t0) estimated value of each of the three indicators, used as proxies of land-based natural capital and the ecosystem services that flow from that land base: land cover/land use change, land productivity status and trends, soil organic carbon status and trends. The baseline of LDN was calculated with estimation of the average values across the 10 years baseline period of the following indica-tors: Land Cover/Land Cover change (LC/LCC), Land Productivity Dynamics (LPD) and Soil Organic Carbon (SOC). Three tier approaches for computation of the selected indicators were used: Tier 1: Global/regional Earth observation, geospatial information and modelling; Tier 2: National statistics (only for LC/LCC) and Tier 3: Field survey. Most sig-nificant changes in LC for the period 2000/2012 are in the categories of Forest land and Shrubs/grasslands. According the global data sets used for analysis of LPD, the total affected area with depletion of Land productivity for the period 2000/2010 is identified on a only 2.35 % of the country territory. The available global data sets gives a model SOC lev-els for the period 2000/2010. According these data, the total loss of SOC in our country is estimated on 3951 t.
Highlights
Demands on global land resources are increasing as the world’s population increases in number and affluence, yet the health and productivity of land is deteriorating [1]
Biodiversity and ecosystem services through reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rain fed cropland, irrigated cropland, or range, pasture, forest and woodlands resulting from land uses or from a process or combination of processes arising from human activities [5]
The dynamics of Land Cover/Land Cover change (LC/LCC) has been analyzed over 10 years period with comparison of ESA-CCI data sets for year 2000 and year 2010, while for CORINE LC datasets were used for the period 2000–2012
Summary
Demands on global land resources are increasing as the world’s population increases in number and affluence, yet the health and productivity of land is deteriorating [1]. Land degradation is a global concern for sustainable development, conservation of biodiversity and mitigating and adapting to climate change It refers to reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of land, reducing carbon storage in soil and vegetation, driving the loss of biodiversity and accelerating climate change [4]. The accepted base line indicators are a) Land cover changes, b) Land productivity dynamics and c) Carbon stocks (bellow and above ground). For our work in the absence of national data generated from field surveys and ground measurements, the global graphical data sets were provided for the 3 indicators used in the process of the "base line" assessment as presented in the Table 1. Default Tier 1 data source ESA Climate Change Initiative Land Cover dataset : spatial resolution 300m; 3 epochs 2000, 2005 and 2010 (2015 available shortly) JRC Land Productivity Dynamics dataset:15-year time series (1999 to 2013) of SPOT Vegetation NDVI; spatial resolution 1 km
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