Desertification of Mediterranean and Mountainous Regions

Abstract

Mountain areas are characterized by a delicate balance between ecosystem productivity and human use of natural resources. This is particularly true in many mountain regions of the developing countries like the Himalayas, the Andes or the African ranges, where the growing demographic pressure initiates vicious circles of degradation. Serious problems also concern mountain areas in developed countries.

Deforestation, forest fires, erosion, agricultural decline, air pollution, massive tourism, traffic, etc. are but a few examples which critically affect soil, vegetation, water and other vital resources of mountainous areas. Good descriptions and case studies of resource degradation are available from the Mediterranean, but an overall understanding is currently missing, as is a theoretical framework to help analyze the multiple-sided issue of desertification. Some research projects offer an opportunity to compare several study areas with different methods throughout the Mediterranean region. The study of desertification phenomena requires combining various sources of information at different time and space levels. A major objective of such studies is the identification of potential indices of desertification in diversified historical and natural contexts and study sites Remote sensing techniques offer a series of promising achievements in this direction. The analysis of desertification in the context of regional environmental change requires various study-scales in time and space, from the local to the regional level, and local case studies must be completed with regional synthesis. Reconstructing past vegetation dynamics is a good example of such an approach, and methods derived from historical botany, like pollen analysis, dendrochronology or pedo-anthracology are particularly relevant for discussing the wide range of methods and techniques that must be combined in any integrated research effort to elucidate desertification processes in the Mediterranean mountains and regions.