Desertification, a process in which the biological productivity of the

There are two things I may like to point out in this beautiful question (thanks and Kudos to Bunuel)


Point No 1. Why choices C, D, and E are no good?

C, D, and E are gross distortion of meaning. You see, desertification is the result of human abuse and natural phenomena and not the process of human abuse and natural phenomena. One may see , the difference in the structure of A and these three choices That is the reason they are in the dump.


Point 2.

I wish to state that whenever you find a modifier at the end of the second factor of a compound noun phrase, as in this case, the modifier modifies both the nouns of the compound noun before and not just the previous noun.



In all the three cases, the sharply degrading and that sharply degrade do modify both the terms 'the abuse and the phenomena', not just 'the phenomena' alone.

Had the author wanted to modify only one item namely the natural phenomena, then he would have written as

C. of natural phenomena that sharply degrade and human abuse

D., which is the process of natural phenomena sharply degrading
And human abuse

E. which is the process of natural phenomena that sharply degrade and human abuse

One can see the reversal of the sentence structure to be rightly able to modify just one item. Therefore C, D, and E are not wrong due to that.

For confirmation, one may look to the legendary official example linked below and correlate the reason for the correct answer

https://gmatclub.com/forum/published-in ... 49209.html