HSIE - Geography - Year 9 - Sustainable Biomes: challenges to food security: Land degradation

Land degradation is the reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rain—fed cropland, irrigated cropland, or range, pasture, forest or woodlands resulting from natural processes, land uses or other human activities and habitation patterns such as land contamination, soil erosion and the destruction of the vegetation cover.

Source: Glossary of Environment Statistics, Studies in Methods, Series F, No. 67, United Nations, New York, 1997.