social-ecological resilience |
The capacity of a social-ecological system to absorb or withstand perturbations and other stressors such that the system remains within the same regime, essentially maintaining its structure and functions. It describes the degree to which the system is capable of self-organization, learning and adaptation.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
societies |
Aggregations of people involved in persistent social interactions or sharing geographical or social territories, often with individual political authorities and dominant cultural expectations.
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Asia-Pacific assessment |
socio-cultural value |
Values shared by people in groups and/or values that inform shared identity of a particular group.
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Scenarios and models assessment |
socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes |
Dynamic mosaics of habitats and land uses where the harmonious interaction between people and nature maintains biodiversity while providing humans with the goods and services needed for their.
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Sustainable use assessment |
socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes |
Dynamic mosaics of habitats and land uses where the harmonious interaction between people and nature maintains biodiversity while providing humans with the goods and services needed for their livelihoods, survival and well-being in a sustainable manner.
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Global assessment (1st work programme) |
socio-ecological system |
A bio-geo- physical unit and its associated social actors and institutions. Socio-ecological systems are complex and adaptive and are delimited by spatial or functional boundaries surrounding particular ecosystems and their specific context.
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Global assessment (1st work programme), Scenarios and models assessment |
socio-ecological system |
A concept used in a variety of analytical approaches intended to examine the relationship between people and nature as inter-linked, recognizing that humans should be seen as a part of, not apart from, nature, and nature as inter-linked to social systems.
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socio-economic driver |
see indirect drivers.
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Scenarios and models assessment |
socio-ecological system |
An ecosystem, the management of this ecosystem by actors and organizations, and the rules, social norms, and conventions underlying this management.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment, Africa assessment, Asia-Pacific assessment, Americas assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment |
soil |
The upper layer of the Earth’s crust transformed by weathering and physical/ chemical and biological processes. It is composed of mineral particles, organic matter, water, air and living organisms organized in genetic soil horizons.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil acidification |
Soil acidification is caused by a number of factors including acidic precipitation and the deposition from the atmosphere of acidifying gases or particles, such as sulphur dioxide, ammonia and nitric acid. The most important causes of soil acidification on agricultural land, however, are the application of ammonium-based fertilizers and urea, elemental S fertilizer and the growth of legumes.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil biodiversity loss |
Decline in the diversity of (micro- and macro-) organisms present in a soil. In turn, this prejudices the ability of soil to provide critical ecosystem services.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil compaction |
An increase in density and a decline of porosity in a soil that impedes root penetration and movements of water and gases.
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Global assessment (1st work programme), Land degradation and restoration assessment, Americas assessment |
soil compaction |
Defined as an increase in density and a decline of porosity in a soil that impedes root penetration and movements of water and gases.
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Europe and Central Asia assessment |
soil contamination |
An increase of toxic compounds (heavy metals, pesticides and so on) in a soil that constitute, directly or indirectly (via the food chain), a hazard for human health and/or for the provision of ecosystem services assured by the soil.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil degradation |
The diminishing capacity of the soil to provide ecosystem goods and services.
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Global assessment (1st work programme), Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil degradation |
The diminishing capacity of the soil to provide ecosystem goods and services as desired by its stakeholders.
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Americas assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment, Global assessment (1st work programme), Global assessment (1st work programme) |
soil ecosystem function |
A description of the significance of soils to humans and the environment. Examples are: (i) control of substance and energy cycles within ecosystems; (ii) basis for the life of plants, animals and man; (iii) basis for the stability of buildings and roads; (iv) basis for agriculture and forestry; (v) carrier of genetic reservoir; (vi) document of natural history; and (vii) archaeological and paleo-ecological document.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil fertility |
The capacity of a soil to receive, store and transmit energy to support plant growth. It is the component of overall soil productivity that deals with its available nutrient status, and its ability to provide nutrients out of its own reserves and through external applications for crop production.
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Sustainable use assessment |
soil fertility |
The capacity of a soil to receive, store and transmit energy to support plant growth. It is the component of overall soil productivity that deals with its available nutrient status, and its ability to provide nutrients out of its own reserves and through.
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soil fertility |
The quality of a soil that enables it to provide compounds in adequate amounts and proper balance to promote growth of plants when other factors (such as light, moisture, temperature and soil structure) are favourable.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil formation rate |
The process of rock weathering though which soil is formed.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil health |
The continued capacity of the soil to function as a vital living system, within ecosystem and land-use boundaries, to sustain biological productivity, promote the quality of air and water environments, and maintain plant, animal and human health.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil organic carbon |
A summarizing parameter including all of the carbon forms for dissolved (DOC: Dissolved Organic Carbon) and total organic compounds (TOC: Total Organic Carbon) in soils.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil organic matter |
Matter consisting of plant and/or animal organic materials, and the conversion products of those materials in soils.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment, Sustainable use assessment |
soil organic matter |
Matter consisting of plant and/or animal organic materials, and the conversion products of those materials in soils (ISO, 2013).
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Americas assessment, Global assessment (1st work programme) |
soil pollution |
Process of soil contamination by chemicals (fertilizers, petroleum products, pesticides, herbicides, mining) which has affected agricultural productivity and other ecosystem services negatively.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil process |
Physical or reactive geochemical and biological processes which may attenuate, concentrate, immobilize, liberate, degrade or otherwise transform substances in soil.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil quality |
Soil quality is a measure of the soil's ability to provide ecosystem and social services through its capacities to perform its functions under changing conditions. Soil quality reflects how well a soil performs the functions of maintaining biodiversity and productivity, partitioning water and solute flow, filtering and buffering, nutrient cycling, and providing support for plants and other structures.
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Europe and Central Asia assessment, Sustainable use assessment |
soil quality |
All current positive or negative properties with regard to soil utilization and soil functions.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil salinization |
Increase in water-soluble salts in soil which is responsible for increasing the osmotic pressure of the soil. In turn, this negatively affects plant growth because less water is made available to plants.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil sealing |
The covering of the soil surface with materials like concrete and stone, as a result of new buildings, roads, parking places, but also other public and private space.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil stability |
The integrity of soil aggregates, degree of soil structural development, and erosion resistance.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
soil structure |
The arrangement of soil particles in a variety of recognized shapes and sizes.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
solitary bee |
Bees that are not fully social (such as honey bees (q.v.), bumble bees (q.v.) and stingless bees (q.v.)), but are instead solitary or primitively social. There are more than 19,000 species of solitary bee.
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Pollination assessment |
sovereignty principle |
Sovereignty in the sense of contemporary public international law denotes the basic international legal status of a state that is not subject, within its territorial jurisdiction, to the governmental, executive, legislative, or judicial jurisdiction of a foreign state or to foreign law other than public international law. A sovereign entity can decide and administer its own laws, can determine the use of its land and can do pretty much as it pleases, free of external influence (within the limitations of international law).
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Land degradation and restoration assessment |
spatial downscaling |
see downscaling.
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Scenarios and models assessment |
spatial scale |
Comprised of two properties: 1) spatial extent - the size of the total area of interest for a particular study (e.g. a watershed, a country, the entire planet); and 2) spatial grain (or resolution) - the size of the spatial units within this total area for which data are observed or predicted (e.g. fine-grained or coarse-grained grid cells).
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Scenarios and models assessment, Pollination assessment |
spatial scale |
In ecology, spatial scale refers to the spatial extent of ecological processes. The responses of organisms, populations, species or communities to the environment may differ at larger or smaller scales. Choosing the scale appropriate to a given ecological process is crucial to hypothesizing and determining the underlying causes of the processes and effects involved.
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specialist species |
A species that can thrive only in restrictive environmental conditions and can make use of only a few different (even only one) resources (for example, a flower-visiting insect that lives on the floral resources provided by one plant or a few different plants or a plant that depends on just one or only a few animal species for pollination).
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Pollination assessment |
species |
An interbreeding group of organisms that is reproductively isolated from all other organisms, although there are many partial exceptions to this rule in particular taxa. Operationally, the term species is a generally agreed fundamental taxonomic unit, based on morphological or genetic similarity, that once described and accepted is associated with a unique scientific name.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment, Asia-Pacific assessment, Sustainable use assessment, Americas assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment |
species composition |
The array of species in a specific sample, community, or area.
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Sustainable use assessment, Americas assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment |
species composition |
The array of species in a specific region, area, or assembly.
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Land degradation and restoration assessment, Global assessment (1st work programme), Asia-Pacific assessment |
species distribution model |
Species distribution models relate field observations of the presence/absence of a species to environmental predictor variables, based on statistically or theoretically derived response surfaces, for prediction and inference. The predictor variables are often climatic but can include other environmental variables.
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Sustainable use assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment, Americas assessment |
species extirpation |
The local extinction of a species.
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Global assessment (1st work programme) |
species richness |
The number of species within a given sample, community, or area.
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Global assessment (1st work programme), Americas assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment, Asia-Pacific assessment, Land degradation and restoration assessment, Sustainable use assessment |
species richness |
Number of species.
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Pollination assessment |
species trait |
The morphological, physiological, phonological or behavioural characteristics of an organism, that typically inform about its response to the environment and effects on the ecosystem (Lavorel & Garnier, 2002; Violle et al., 2007).
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Global assessment (1st work programme) |
species trait |
The morphological, physiological, phonological or behavioral characteristics of an organism, that typically inform about its response to the environment and effects on the ecosystem.
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Sustainable use assessment |
species-area relationship |
A well-known strong empirical relationship between the area (A) of a region or patch of habitat and the number of species (S) it contains. Over most spatial scales, a power-law relationship S = cAz provides a good fit to data, with z often around 0.25 for separate sets of regions (known as the island species-area relationship) and 0.15 for nested parts of the same region (known as the continental species-area relationship). The species- area relationship has often been used to estimate the size of an extinction debt (qv) resulting from habitat loss.
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Global assessment (1st work programme) |