Desertification is a type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby fertile areas become arid. It is the spread of arid areas caused by a variety of factors, such as overexploitation of soil as a result of human activity and the effects of climate change. Geographic areas most affected include the Sahel region in Africa, the Gobi Desert and Mongolia in Asia as well as parts of South America. Drylands occupy approximately 40–41% of Earth's land area and are home to more than 2 billion people.
A dust storm, also called a sandstorm, is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Fine particles are transported by saltation and suspension, a process that moves soil from one place and deposits it in another.
Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction. She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter (1930–2008), and prior to his death was also known as Lady Antonia Pinter.
Alfred Leslie Rowse was a British historian and writer, best known for his work on Elizabethan England and books relating to Cornwall.
Paul Bede Johnson was an English journalist, popular historian, speechwriter and author. Although associated with the political left in his early career, he became a popular conservative historian.
Nicholas Crane is an English geographer, explorer, writer and broadcaster. Since 2004 he has written and presented four television series for BBC Two: Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town.
Going to Extremes and Surviving Extremes are television programmes made for Channel 4 by Nick Middleton. In each episode of the two series, Middleton visited an extreme area of the world to find out how people have adapted to life there.
Robert Alwyn Petrie Hewison is a British cultural historian.
David S. G. Thomas is a British scientist and geographer. He was born at his parents' home in River, near Dover, Kent, UK, in October 1958. He is Professor of geography at the University of Oxford, the fifth person to hold the Statuary Chair, and a Professorial Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.
Geoffrey Moorhouse, FRGS, FRSL was an English journalist and author. He was born Geoffrey Heald in Bolton and took his stepfather's surname. He attended Bury Grammar School. He began writing as a journalist on the Bolton Evening News. At the age of 27, he joined The Manchester Guardian where he eventually became chief feature writer and combined writing books with journalism.
Andrew Shaw Goudie is a geographer at the University of Oxford specialising in desert geomorphology, dust storms, weathering, and climatic change in the tropics. He is also known for his teaching and best-selling textbooks on human impacts on the environment. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of forty-one books and more than two hundred papers published in learned journals. He combines research and some teaching with administrative roles.
Katharine McMahon is an historical novelist who, since 1990, has published ten books.
Andrew Annandale Sinclair FRSL FRSA was a British novelist, historian, biographer, critic, filmmaker, and a publisher of classic and modern film scripts. He has been described as a "writer of extraordinary fluency and copiousness, whether in fiction or in American social history".
Giles MacDonogh is a British writer, historian and translator.
Andrew Warren is a British physical geographer. He is Emeritus Professor of Geography at University College London, UK.
John Goodwin was a British theatre publicist, writer and editor who played a crucial role in the development of subsidised theatre in post-war Britain; first with the Royal Shakespeare Company where in the 60s he led the media campaign against concerted attempts to close its flourishing London base; then with the Royal National Theatre where, as an associate director and member of its planning committee, he was a key figure in the administrative team which, in the '70s and '80s, shaped its historic first years on London's South Bank. He was the author of a number of books on the theatre including the best-selling A Short Guide to Shakspeare's Plays. He also edited and compiled the classic reference work British Theatre Design and edited the internationally best-selling diaries of Sir Peter Hall.
Alfred Thomas Grove, known more commonly as Dick Grove, was a British geographer and climatologist. He was Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge and a Director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge. Grove researched Environmental Issues and Policy and the landscape change in southern Europe and Climate change and desertification with a focus on Africa and southern Europe. He was awarded the Busk Medal in 1982 for his field work in Africa.
Rita Ann Moden Gardner, is a British geographer and academic, specialising in geomorphology. Since January 2019, she has been Chief Executive of the Academy of Social Sciences. She taught at St Catherine's College, Oxford (1978–1979), King's College, London (1979–1994), and finally at Queen Mary and Westfield College (1994–1996) where she was Reader in Environmental Science. From 1996 to 2018, she was Director of the Royal Geographical Society: she was the learned society's first female director.
Heather Viles is a professor of biogeomorphology and heritage conservation in the school of geography and the environment at Oxford University, senior research fellow at Worcester College, and honorary professor at the Institute of Sustainable Heritage, University College London. She is a Fellow of the British Society for Geomorphology.
