Land Degradation Neutrality: the Modern Approach to Research on Arid Regions at the National Level

摘要

The results of the application of the concept of land degradation neutrality (LDN) and the methodology to assess LDN indicators for arid regions of Russia are presented for the first time. It is shown that the LDN state has not been achieved in any of the arid regions of our country, since the proportion of degraded lands is positive everywhere and ranges from 9 to 67%. The concept of the LDN index is introduced, which makes it convenient to compare and rank individual territories, and an assessment of some arid regions of Russia is given according to this indicator. Simultaneously, it is concluded that the results are preliminary and need to be validated and specified on the basis of comparison with the existing national data obtained by traditional methods.