This annual report addresses the partnerships that have enhanced ILRI's work at national, regional and international levels, highlighting three particularly inspiring ventures - poverty mapping in East Africa, the Crop-Animal Systems Research Network in Southeast Asia, and development of an improved East Coast fever vaccine, which has engaged researchers from three continents. The five research themes into which ILRI restructured its research portfolio are also outlined.

There is renewed interest in the use of native tree species in ecosystem restoration for their biodiversity benefits. Growing native tree species in production systems (e.g. plantation forests and subsistence agriculture) can also ensure landscape functionality and support for human livelihoods. Achieving these full benefits requires consideration of genetic aspects that are often neglected, such as suitability of germplasm to the site, quality and quantity of the genetic pool used and regeneration potential.

Development of socio-economic scenarios and translating them into suitable storylines and provide an overview of potential data to be used for a quantification of future disease vulnerabilities

The fire severity of the 2013–2014 fire season within Sudanian ecosystems in Burkina Faso was evaluated from Landsat 8 images using derivatives of the Normalized Burn Ratio algorithm (NBR). The relationship between the image-derived severity and the field observed severity i.e. Composite Burn Index (CBI) was best described by a nonlinear model of the form y = a + b*EXP(CBI *c) (R2 = 0.66). Classification of the image-derived burned area into burn severity classes achieved a classification Kappa accuracy statistic of 0.56.

As the only international centre that is solely concerned with African livestock, ILCA has a responsibility to play a lead role in defining the agenda of research issues related to livestock development and environmental policy in Africa. This paper presents a framework appropriate for defining that agenda and for guiding analysis of particular research issues and gives some detail on how ILCA might approach the specific area of range management policy in the arid and semi-arid areas.