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Article: Discrepancies about soil degradation. (Commentary).
- Article from:
- Environment
- Article date:
- September 1, 2002
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I read with interest the clear report of David Niemeijer and Valentina Mazzucato's findings on soil degradation in the Sahel region of West Africa in the March 2002 issue of Environment. (1) Their data are convincing, and it can be agreed that there is a need for more thorough work on the subject. However, the discrepancies that the authors highlight between their results (which dispute widespread degradation) and earlier, more broad-scale work based on modeling and limited field data are only apparent rather than real.
Arable land (and some permanent crops) covered some 8 percent (2.1 million hectares) of Burkina Faso's land area in the early 1960s and about 12 ...