CASCADE Project – Desertification

The knowledge needed to understand and predict thresholds for catastrophic transitions in European dryland ecosystems is still limited. The challenge is to improve understanding of the processes underlying soil-water-plant systems as well as socio-economic drivers and land-use management. We are identifying what might push dryland ecosystems towards thresholds, in order to be able to define thresholds for tipping points and find ways to prevent such transitions from happening.

As tipping points are likely approaching, urgent action is needed to avoid catastrophic changes in dryland ecosystems. Our goal is to create decision-making tools to find appropriate management options that help prevent change and promote sustainable land management. We hope that these tools, as well as tipping point predictions, can be used by policymakers and land users to more sustainably manage drylands around the world.

In the CASCADE project, researchers are conducting experiments at study sites in arid regions of Portugal, Spain, Italy, Crete and Cyprus to better understand discontinuous transitions, or tipping points, in ecosystems.