Interactions among processes, vegetation dynamics anddesertification

Arid and semi-arid ecosystems are very vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic disturbances due to special climatic conditions (e,g., high aridity and low precipitation) also lack of diversity in their structures and variables. Desertification resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human disturbances such as changes in land use and overgrazing also, many natural processes. These agents with heterogeneous changing ecologic, hydrologic, and edaphic current patterns and increasing land degradation can provide a background of justification for the acceleration of catastrophic transitions onto a degraded states. Therefore, desertification can describe as the three-way interactions among processes, vegetation dynamics and land degradation. Understanding of these interactions can be effective to forecasting catastrophic transitions and consequently managing such vulnerable landscapes. Here we investigate the role of the interaction among anthropogenic-geomorphic processes, vegetation dynamic and land degradation on the evolution trends of arid landscape. The results of this study showed how these processes with changing vegetation structures lead to dryland degradation and how these conditions, in turn, affect other processes activity.

Keywords:

Functional processes , Vegetation structures , Dryland degradation