What is land desertification?

What is land desertification? In layman’s terms, it means that land becomes desert. The United Nations defines desertification as follows: Desertification refers to land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas due to natural variability and human activities. These include: ① loss of soil material caused by wind and water erosion; ② degradation of physical, chemical and biological properties or economic properties of soil; ③ long-term loss of natural vegetation.

Once the land becomes desertified, it will bring disaster to people's production and life. There are 30 to 100 days of strong winds above Level 8 in the sandy area every year. Quicksand invades, covering farmland, pastures, towns, villages, roads and water conservancy facilities, silting up river beds, causing floods and polluting the environment. Desertification destroys the land and environment that humans rely on for survival, leading to increased poverty, population migration and even social unrest.

When investigating the responsibility for desertification, unreasonable human activities bear the brunt, such as backward farming technology, deforestation, overgrazing, overexploitation of remote areas and overexploitation of groundwater resources. These extreme behaviors destroy vegetation reestablishment and soil stability, turning the land into a desert where only inedible weeds grow or no grass grows. Of course, natural geographical conditions and significant climate variability are also important causes of desertification.