In a period when the prospect of comprehensive climate change and the risks of rising temperatures and drying of certain areas become specific, the management of desert areas acquires an urgent character. Desertification is a particularly complex phenomenon and, as evidenced by the reading of the texts in this volume, there are close ties and multiple interactions between climatic, geodynamic, biological, and human factors that contribute to the manifestation of the phenomenon. But it is also difficult to define and record. For the local populations of farmers and herders living in demographically declining areas, expressions such as "the place is ruined" or "the place has become wild" indicate the perspective of the local society, experiencing the event as social desertification and the retreat of local culture in the face of wild nature.

The publication of this volume is a conscious choice of mono-disciplinary works. The different perspectives in approaching desertification, as a typical product of the relationships between society and nature, offer a wealth of opinions and force individual analyses into openings and constant questioning. The texts included in the volume allow readers to discover where the analyses of authors from different scientific cultures intersect and where they diverge. In an era of constant questioning of scientific certainties and the rise of relativism, the possibility of presenting multiple and different, but equivalent, interpretations offers a new dynamic for the study of desertification.