Land Degradation

Land degradation is the long-term decline in the productive capacity of agricultural land, caused by any combination of soil erosion, nutrient depletion, salinization, compaction, desertification or the loss of vegetation cover, generally driven by farming or grazing pressure that outpaces the land's own capacity to recover. It is distinguished from any one of its specific causes by naming the cumulative loss of productive capacity itself, which is the outcome international land-restoration efforts such as the UN Convention to Combat Desertification are built to reverse.