Assessing The Contribution Of Climate Change And Human Activities To Desertification In Northern Kordofan Province,Sudan

Vegetation desertification received considerable concern that is for its adverse affect on agronomic productivity and its capacity to provide improvements and service.Climate change and human activities are commonly recognized as the two broad underlying forces that lead to vegetation desertification.In this research a comprehensive method based on net primary productivity(NPP)was used to assess quantitatively the contribution of climate change and human activities to desertification in Northern Kordofan province,Sudan from 2000 to 2008.We used three types of net primary productivity(NPP).The actual NPP,Potential NPP and HNPP(human appropriation of NPP)to discriminate the relative role of climate change and human activities in desertification.The results show,63.75% of the study area experienced desertification expansion.Within which,67.32% was induced by Human activities compared with 32.03% caused by climate change and 0.65% caused by a combination of the two factors.By contrast,climate change is the dominant factor of desertification reversion,2.3% of desertification reversion caused by human activities compared with 97.7% induced by climate change and there isn’t interaction between climate change and human activities in reversion area.The largest area of expansion and reversion occurred in northeast and western parts of the study area respectively.We developed two propositions in the study area.First,the desertification expansion was induced by human activities,whereas desertification reversion was induced by climate change as typified in north east part,central part and southern part.Second,both desertification expansion and reversion was induced by climate change as typified in northwest part of study area.The role of human activities on desertification expansion is more than climate change.Therefore,human activities issues should be gradually integrated into future police and plans for domestic vegetation management and administration.