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Overgrazing by livestock can lead to land degradation. Land degradation is a process where land becomes less healthy and productive due to a combination of human activities or natural conditions. The causes for land degradation are numerous and complex. [1] Human activities are often the main cause, such as unsustainable land management practices.
Desertification: Human-led changes in land management practices lead to changes in the ecological characteristics of a region. Land mismanagement and climate change can lead to a loss of ecosystem services, such as through degradation of soil. [15] Together, these losses can result in desertification seen in arid and dry areas.
According to Global Assessment of Land Degradation and Improvement (GLADA) a quarter of land area around the globe can now be marked as degraded. Land degradation is supposed to influence lives of 1.5 billion people and 15 billion tons of fertile soil is lost every year due to anthropogenic activities and climate change. [29]
Water and wind erosion are now the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for 84% of degraded acreage. [2] Each year, about 75 billion tons of soil is eroded from the land—a rate that is about 13–40 times as fast as the natural rate of erosion. [78]
Soil contamination, soil pollution, or land pollution as a part of land degradation is caused by the presence of xenobiotic (human-made) chemicals or other alteration in the natural soil environment. It is typically caused by industrial activity, agricultural chemicals or improper disposal of waste .
But included in that 10–20% of land is the approximately 9 million square kilometers of seasonally dry-lands that humans have converted to deserts through the process of desertification. [7] The tallgrass prairies of North America, on the other hand, have less than 3% of natural habitat remaining that has not been converted to farmland.
Restoring the world's degraded land and holding back its deserts will require at least $2.6 trillion in investment by the end of the decade, the U.N. executive overseeing global talks on the issue ...
Normally, rights of use of common land in England and Wales were, and still are, closely regulated, and available only to "commoners". If excessive use was made of common land, for example in overgrazing, a common would be "stinted", that is, a limit would be put on the number of animals each commoner was allowed to graze.