Human and Desertification

Abstract

The present review paper outlined the history of how various types of desertification/land degradation were originated regionally, intensified, and spread to a larger area in the agricultural history and climate change over the past hundred thousand years. Region-specific methods of agriculture were invented fitting in with the local natural resources and developed in the sequence characterized by each of major climo-vegetation types in the world (forest, woodland, and grassland/desert), whereas the corresponding region-specific types of desertification occurred if agricultural impacts exceeded the resilience of the natural resources. Also, they occurred when the agricultural methods were transferred to different climo-vegetation regions owing to the mismatch with the new environment. Thus, a countermeasure against desertification, that was produced in a climo-vegetation region, is potentially transferable to the same type of region.