Apportioning Human-Induced and Climate-Induced Land Degradation: A Case of the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality

Land degradation (LD) is a global issue that affects sustainability and livelihoods of approximately 1.5 billion people, especially in arid/semi-arid regions. Hence, identifying and assessing LD and its driving forces (natural and anthropogenic) is important in order to design and adopt appropriate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied sciences 2023-03, Vol.13 (6), p.3644
Main Authors: Kgaphola, Motsoko Juniet, Ramoelo, Abel, Odindi, John, Mwenge Kahinda, Jean-Marc, Seetal, Ashwin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Anthropogenic factors
Arid regions
Arid zones
Climate
Climate change
Climate variability
Drought
Environmental economics
Gullies
Gully erosion
Human influences
Land degradation
Land management
land use and land cover change
Land use planning
Mann–Kendall trend
Mitigation
Monitoring systems
NDVI
Normalized difference vegetative index
Precipitation
Precipitation variability
Productivity
Rain
Rain and rainfall
Rainfall
Range management
Rangelands
Regions
residual trend (RESTREND)
Satellites
Semi arid areas
Semiarid lands
Soil erosion
Spatial data
Sustainability management
Trends
Vegetation
Vegetation cover
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Summary:Land degradation (LD) is a global issue that affects sustainability and livelihoods of approximately 1.5 billion people, especially in arid/semi-arid regions. Hence, identifying and assessing LD and its driving forces (natural and anthropogenic) is important in order to design and adopt appropriate sustainable land management interventions. Therefore, using vegetation as a proxy for LD, this study aimed to distinguish anthropogenic from rainfall-driven LD in the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality from 1990 to 2019. It is widely established that rainfall highly correlates with vegetation productivity. A linear regression was performed between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and rainfall. The human-induced LD was then distinguished from that of rainfall using the spatial residual trend (RESTREND) method and the Mann–Kendall (MK) trend. RESTREND results showed that 11.59% of the district was degraded due to human activities such as overgrazing and injudicious rangeland management. While about 41.41% was degraded due to seasonal rainfall variability and an increasing frequency of droughts. Climate variability affected vegetation cover and contributed to different forms of soil erosion and gully formation. These findings provide relevant spatial information on rainfall or human-induced LD, which is useful for policy formulation and the design of LD mitigation measures in semi-arid regions.
ISSN:2076-3417
2076-3417
DOI:10.3390/app13063644