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variations and human activities.[1] Desertification is one of the worlds most alarming global environmental problems. It takes place worldwide in drylands. At least 90 per cent of the inhabitants of drylands live in developing countries and they suffer the poorest economic and social conditions. Drylands occupy 41 per cent of Earths land area and are home to more than 2 billion people. It has been estimated1 that some 1020 per cent of drylands are already degraded, the total area affected by desertification being between 6 and 12 million square kilometres, that about 16 per cent of the inhabitants of drylands live in desertified areas, and that a billion people are under threat from further desertification.[2] A major impact of desertification is reduced biodiversity and diminished productive capacity, for example, by transition from land dominated by shrublands to non-native grasslands[citation needed]. For example, in the semi-arid regions of southern California, many coastal sage scrub and chaparral ecosystems have been replaced by non-native, invasive grasses due to the shortening of fire return intervals. This can create a monoculture of annual grass that cannot support the wide range of animals once found in the original ecosystem[citation needed]. In Madagascar's central highland plateau[citation needed], 10% of the entire country has desertified due to slash and burn agriculture by indigenous peoples[citation needed]. Desertification is a historic phenomenon; the world's great deserts were formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts are large sand seas now inactive because they are stabilized by vegetation, some extending beyond the present margins of core deserts, such as the Sahara.[3] Dated fossil pollen indicates that today's Sahara desert has been changing between desert and fertile savanna. Studies also show that prehistorically the advance and retreat of deserts tracked yearly rainfall, whereas a pattern of increasing amounts of desert began with human-driven activities of overgrazing and deforestation[citation needed]. A chief difference of prehistoric versus present desertification is the much greater rate of desertification than in prehistoric and geologic time scales, due to anthropogenic influences