The Re-Greening of the Sahel: Natural Cyclicity or Human-Induced Change? | Land Portal

Resource information

Date of publication: 
October 2014
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
10.3390/land3031075
License of the resource: 
Copyright details: 
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article.

The Sahel has been the focus of scientific interest in environmental-human dynamics and interactions. The objective of the present study is to contribute to the recent debate on the re-greening of Sahel. The paper examines the dynamics of barren land in the Sahel of Burkina Faso through analysis of remotely-sensed and rainfall data from 1975–2011. Discussions with farmers and land management staff have helped to understand the anthropogenic efforts toward soil restoration to enable the subsistence farming agriculture. Results showed that area of barren land has been fluctuating during the study period with approximately 10-year cyclicity. Similarly, rainfall, both at national and local levels has followed the same trends. The trends of the area of barren land and rainfall variability suggest that when rainfall increases, the area of barren land decreases and barren land increases when rainfall decreases. This implies that rainfall is one of the main factors driving the change in area of barren land. In addition, humans have contributed positively and negatively to the change by restoring barren lands for agriculture using locally known techniques and by accelerating land degradation through intensive and inappropriate land use practices.

Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Ouedraogo, Issa
Runge, Jürgen
Eisenberg, Joachim
Barron, Jennie
Sawadogo-Kaboré, Séraphine

Publisher(s): 

Data provider

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