Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of important Earth observation data and studies to assess land degradation in drylands. Section 2 presents general considerations regarding the assessment and monitoring of land degradation, including suitable indicators as well as sensor systems. The following sections review the state of the art on the assessment of land condition (Section 3), the monitoring of land use/land cover changes to assess land degradation processes (Section 4), and the identification of human-induced drivers of land degradation using integrated concepts (Section 5), whereas Section 6 describes limits and uncertainties regarding dryland observation. This chapter concludes with a summary of land degradation assessment and monitoring by remote sensing techniques (Section 7).