Climate Change and Impact of Desertification or Soil/ Land Degradation in Turkey, Combating Desertification

The total arable land of Turkey is about 28,054,000 ha. The main income of the country is agriculture and agriculture based industry. However, the prime soils cover only 17.5% of the total land surface and the productivity of the rest of the soils is limited by topographical, chemical (e.g. high calcium carbonate content, alkalinity and low organic matter), and physical (e.g. water logging, texture) attributes. The diverse topography along with deforestation and unsuitable tillage and irrigation management has been inducing the rate of erosion in the country for centuries. The majority of the country's soils (76.5%) are prone to erosion risk due to the dominant steep slopes (>6%), and 72% of the soils are more or less affected from water and wind erosion. Alongside these unsuitable conditions, the misuse of lands, i.e. soil sealing, soil exploitation, over use of fertilizers and irrigation, improper use of indigenous environmental friendly, agro-ecosystems, constantly degrade the soils of the country. Soils with high production capacity and with a wide range of agricultural uses, cover 7% (about 5 million ha) of the total land area (77.9 million ha) of Turkey. This proportion is equal to about 1/5 of the potential agricultural soils of the country. The highly to moderately productive soils (soils of Land Capability Class I, II, III) comprising an area of 19.1 million ha, with none LCC I) to one or more moderate to severe limitations (LCC II and III) for some uses, require some kind of conservation practices to assure stability and sustainability of production as the essential part of the management system. Permanent limitations as water logged conditions as well as salinity would demand expensive investments in land management particularly for LCC III soils. This is almost equal to 1/4 (25%) of the country's land. However, there are 7.4 million ha land which is marginally productive (LCC IV), where parts of this is currently used for cultivation, pastures, forests and settlement areas, which cover about 4.9 million ha. About 573 000 ha of land is occupied by various industries and urban settlements, most of which is of Prime Quality (LCC I) and larger than the cultivated soils of many townships. Land with increased erosion due to misuse -unplanned- is about 6.2 million ha and the total non-arable (unsuitable for cultivation) (LCC V, VI, VII) land is 6.3 million ha Land/soil degradation and natural resources degradation should be included in the concept of "desertification". In this framework, there are three major causes for the occurrence of desertification, these are namely the natural, technical, and socio-economic, administrative and legal causes. Erosion is the major impact of desertification, which is caused by the mismanagement of the land. It is a land degradation phenomenon accelerated by unplanned land management-the human impact-rather than natural causes. Deforestation, an on-going process for centuries in Anatolia, is the major driving force of land degradation reached by the unplanned and illegal cutting of forests to provide materials or fuel for heating, along with improper settling policies and overgrazing.