干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Many elements determine land sensitivity to desertification, whose analysis requires multifactorial approaches to be used. The environmental sensitive areas methodology is a well-known approach to estimate sensitivity to desertification that accounts for multiple interacting driving forces, conceived and validated in a Mediterranean environment. We show that the environmental sensitive areas methodology can be used, with minor modifications, in a tropical context, where it allows the discrimination among environments with different degree of susceptibility to degradation and resilience. The results obtained for the Dominican Republic show that 484% of its territory is critically sensitive to desertification, and 164% of it is highly critically sensitive to desertification, mostly because of intense and inadequate land use practices. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.