Desertification baseline: A bottleneck for addressing desertification

Abstract

The desertification baseline is the standard to measure the severity of desertification and is imperative to achieve the target of land degradation neutrality of UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15.3. However, desertification baselines are fragmented because of various modeling approaches and incompatible thresholds of indicators, leading to the evaluation results of desertification shrouded in controversy. In this review, we have examined the current status of the desertification baseline and explored its current problems and potential directions. Potential natural conditions, the theoretical conditions that would occur under existing environmental conditions without active human intervention, can standardize the evaluation of desertification and restoration in drylands to make assessments more compatible across and within regions. The results of our perspective will raise attention to desertification and put forward the establishment of a robust and unified desertification baseline to help achieve land degradation neutrality and conserve the multiple environmental, economic, and social benefits drylands provide.This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [4231101337, 42171042, 42307600]. Tianshan Talent Training Program [20232108091]. CAS President’s International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) project [2024VCA0004]