Land is one of the most valuable resource for mankind as well as one of nature’s most precious gifts. It is that part of lithosphere that sustains life as well as provides various existential resources to human beings.
Land is a mixture of inorganic and organic materials. It provides various kind of resources like food, fibre, medicine, minerals as well as services like agricultural productivity, biological diversity, carbon sequestration etc. The most basic use of land is to support vegetation of various kinds, thereby providing a place for all the terrestrial fauna to exist.
Land resource is under huge threat due to misuse and mismanagement by humans. Various anthropogenic activities have led to land losing its productivity leading and becoming degraded and polluted. An extreme case of land degradation is desertification wherein semidry regions of world are losing their productive capacity to such an extent that they are becoming barren and desert like due to anthropogenic activities and climate change issues.
Land degradation and soil erosion are impacting the various resources and services that we humans obtain from land. It is impacting our quality of life and in many cases our very survival, as we are directly and indirectly dependent on it.