The Impacts of Climate Change and Human Activities on Desertification in Northern China

Aeolian desertification is land degradation characterized by wind erosion in arid, semiarid and sub-humid regions mainly resulting form excessive human activities on natural resources. The total area of aeolian desertification in Northern China reached up to 400,000 km2 by 2000. We believe that climate change can have important impacts on aeolian desertification through wind erosion and rainfall variation, and that human activity is also a very active factor in the process of aeolian desertification which mainly impacts land use and land cover. Taking wind erosion as an example, such human impact can increase wind erosion by a factor of four.