Desertification

The World Atlas of Desertification was published by UNEP in 1992 as the result of a cooperative effort between UNEP's Desertification Control Programme Activity Centre (DC/PAC), the Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS) and the Global Resource Information Database (GRID). GRID compiled and/or derived most of the global and regional databases, produced the maps and carried out the data analyses and tabulations for the Atlas, assisted by a Technical Advisory Group on Desertification Assessment and Mapping composed of various international experts. The Atlas includes information and many maps derived from the Global Assessment of Human-Induced Soil Degradation (GLASOD), as conducted in 1990 by the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) at Wageningen, The Netherlands, on behalf of UNEP.

Aside from GLASOD's data on soil degradation, and in order to capture the multi-dimensional nature of global desertification processes, other data layers relating to global climate and vegetation were compiled by GRID for inclusion in the 1992 World Atlas of Desertification. The NOAA/GVI data set described herein was created by GRID-Nairobi as a unique product for the Desertification Atlas, in order to represent baseline or "normal" conditions of global vegetation, and to be used in combination with the climate, GLASOD and land degradation data sets.