International Activities Related to Dryland Degradation Assessment and Drought - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 424

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lems. The assessment of the degree, extent, and past rate of soil degradation
is still based on expert opinion, and the scale (1:5 million) is still not
adequate to guide national soil improvement policies.

Im proving the Land Degradation Assessment
An accurate assessment of land degradation at a flexible scale combining
socioeconomic and biophysical aspects and driving forces is needed to plan
actions and investments to reverse land degradation to improve socioeco-
nomic livelihoods and to conserve dryland ecosystems and their unique bi-
ological diversity. A further advance is the use of the ecosystem approach
as a framework for action under the Convention on Biological Diversity
(www.biodiv.org ) and as a strategy for the integrated management of land,
water and biological resources.
Recent advances in participatory planning and management of re-
sources, integrated ecosystem approaches to resources assessment using
economic-ecological zoning, remote sensing and Geographic Information
System (GIS) techniques, as well as the economic valuation of soil loss and
strategic impact assessments of policies and interventions provide an op-
portunity for developing an improved land degradation assessment system.
In addition to a Global Water Resources Assessment and Global Bio-
diversity Assessment, the International Institute for Applied Systems Anal-
ysis and FAO have developed a system for rational land-use planning on
the basis of agroecological zones methodology (Fischer et al., 2000). This
methodology can be applied at national, regional, and local levels. The In-
ternational Food Policy Research Institute and World Resources Institute
have undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the earth's ecosystems,
such as a Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems and Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, sponsored by the Global Environment Facility, the United Na-
tions Foundation, the Packard Foundations, and the World Bank (Reid,
2000). UNEP and FAO have developed guidelines for erosion and deser-
tification control management with particular reference to Mediterranean
coastal areas (UNEP/MAP/PAP, 2000). Socioeconomic data sets (Global
Farming System Study, Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Mapping sys-
tems) have also become increasingly available (www.fao.org).
The vegetation index based on data from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (chapters 5 and 6), high-resolution
satellite data (e.g., Landsat TM, SPOT, RADARSAT, etc.), meteorological
satellite (METEOSAT) data (chapters 19 and 32), and GIS techniques that
are now available and have been used cost effectively for mapping risk
of erosion or land degradation using GIS by overlaying different thematic
layers and using a model have been tested in a number of studies, such as
the FAO study in Parana, Brazil (FAO, 1997). The method of assessing
degradation depends largely on the spatial scale—for example, regional
scale versus continental scale, as shown in table 33.1.

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