Atlas of Mediterranean Environments in Europe : The Desertification Context

The Mediterranean countries of Europe have been undergoing rapid change and development since the 1960s and especially since the mid-1980s.

These changes have occurred in all aspects of life and livelihood, and for many countries such change has had far reaching social and economic impacts.

Accompanying these changes, the results of centuries of distinctive man-environment relationships in a climatically marginal region have been swept aside and the landscape itself is undergoing a rapid transformation.

Large areas are being abandoned, temporarily or permanently by rural populations, urban growth is rampant, agriculture has been intensified and water scarcity, fed by the severe droughts of the 1980s and 1990s has become a major environmental and resource concern.

At the same time the threat of global climate change, and the indications of deeper and more sustained future droughts has brought the issues into sharp focus.Based on the findings of the European Community's MEDALUS project, this atlas discusses the background, the contemporary understanding and the future prospects of solution of the environmental crisis which is now facing the Mediterranean regions of Europe.The atlas is sold individually or as part of a 2 volume set with "Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use" (ISBN 0-471-94250-2) - an edited volume that presents the findings of the MEDALUS project which focuses on the processes, causes and effects of Mediterranean land degradation and desertification.Together, these two books provide the very latest evidence and understanding of Mediterranean desertification and land use.