DeSurvey is a project funded by the European Commission under the Framework Programme 6 and contributing to the implementation of the actions 'Mechanisms of desertification' and 'Assessment of the vulnerability to desertification and early warning options' within the 'Global Change & Ecosystems priority'.

In spite of the relevance of appropriate actions to counter and to combat desertification, there is a lack of standardised procedures to perform them at operational scales. The DeSurvey project offers a contribution to fill this gap by complementing assessment of desertification status with early warning and vulnerability evaluation of the involved land use systems. In this context, the interactive effects of climatic and human drivers of desertification will be taken into account in a dynamic way.

The ambition of the DeSurvey consortium is to deliver a compact set of integrated procedures of desertification assessment and forecasting, with application and tutorial examples at the EU and national scales. The performance of DeSurvey in other desertification threatened areas of UNCCD regional Annexes will be also tested against other expertise and available procedures. Indeed, partners (and sites) from Maghrebian and Sahelian countries as well as from Chile and NW China are associate members of this project.

DeSurvey 39 partners representing 10 EU Member States and 6 Third Country States, integrate key research organisations and industrial companies with a wide range of skills. They develop an operational prototype that includes flexible procedures, with generic and case specific components to which users can adapt according their biophysical and socio-economic environments and their data availability. DeSurvey will support international, European, national and regional authorities, organizations and institutions in fulfilling their monitoring/surveillance and reporting obligations, and help them to increase the efficiency of desertification treatment policies.

The Desurvey project is conducting a survey to assess policy information needs of end-user organisations

If you work in desertification policy or management organisations, you are invited to answer to two questionnaires:

• the first one is about the information requirements of policy and management organisations involved in combating desertification.
• the second one aims at analysing the usefulness of computer-based tools in policy and management organisations.