Limits to Sustainability

Unsustainable human activities put the land resource at risk.
If we wish to arrest or reverse the decline of our natural resource base,
we must first understand and monitor the land status as well as understand
the various change processes that can result in land degradation.

This will allow us to understand, or establish, “planetary boundaries,”
or the limits of the biophysical envelope that sustains life on Earth.
By comprehending the environmental thresholds within which human
actions can be maintained we can avoid severe or catastrophic disruption
in the future.

Climate constraints such as changing aridity and drought,
the global distribution and change of surface and groundwater resources,
the status of soils, dynamics of vegetation and the appropriation of it,
as well as dynamics in biodiversity are covered in this section.