Study on Land Degradation Assessment Indicators based on Literature Analysis

The monitoring and assessment indicators of land degradation play a very important role in protecting and using land resources.In this paper,the authors respectively search the literatures on land degradation,soil erosion and desertification which were published at home and abroad,and then the authors record,count and analyze the indicators selected from those literatures based on the method of bibliometrics.The result indicates that these indicators can be divided into six classes,including soil,vegetation,society and economy,zoology and biology,climate and topography.According to the analysis result,vegetation cover,slope gradient,level of income,organic substance content and type of land use,etc.are frequently used in Chinese and English literatures about land degradation assessment,meanwhile vegetation factor,slope gradient,type of topography,organic substance content and type of land use are frequently used in the literatures about soil erosion assessment,and vegetation cover,percent of sandy land,type of land use,organic substance content,population,etc.are frequently used in literatures about desertification assessment.And for remote sensing monitoring,the high frequency indicators include vegetation cover,slope gradient,type of land use,etc.