World's Land Slipping in Quality

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http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/04/20/degraded-land.html

World's Land Slipping in Quality

Emily Sohn, Discovery News

April 20, 2009 -- Nearly 25 percent of land around the world is in bad shape and getting worse, according to a new study, and human activities are to blame.

It's the first study to directly measure the extent of human-induced global land degradation. The phenomenon describes a decline in the http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/05/08/soil-food-crisis.html">quality of soil and vegetation that the land can't recover from on its own.

Land degradation can have severe economic and environmental consequences, said David Dent, a Netherlands-based environmental scientist with ISRIC-World Soil Information, a soil research and education organization.

"Once it's gone, it's awfully hard to get it back again," Dent said. "It's bad news for water. It's bad news for food production. And it's bad news for forests. It's bad news."

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