Land Degradation Neutrality Assessment at Higher Tiers

Land degradation and desertification, the reduction or loss of the land’s biological or economic productivity, accelerated during the 20th century. This can be related to population growth, mechanisation of agriculture and forest management, increasing livestock numbers, the suboptimal design and implementation of land management policies, and climate change. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 15.3.1 (Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area) aims to halt this degradation by balancing losses (declines in land-based natural capital) and gains (increases in land-based natural capital) across land use types. The Good Practice Guidance of SDG 15.3.1 and its 2025 Addendum, which supports the national-level  reporting of the indicator, are developed with a global perspective. The reporting analysis starts in the year 2000, in consideration of  the resolution and availability of Earth Observation data. Thus, important desertification processes are already missed. However, assessments can be undertaken at different levels of accuracy, detail and complexity, increasing from Tier 1 (broad methods with default values) to Tier 2 (additional use of country-specific data) to Tier 3 methods (more complex methods involving ground  measurements and modelling). Here we will present an example of a desertification assessment for marginal, rainfed croplands in Cyprus, under 250-350 mm average annual rain, with the use of Sentinel-2 data. The methodology is inspired by the SDG 15.3.1 productivity sub-indicator and uses an innovative approach to address the time frame limitations of  desertification assessments.

This research is financially supported by the TERRASAFE project, which is co-funded by the European Union (GA 10115737) and by UK Research and Innovation.