Diversification and adaptation strategies to climate variability: A farm typology for the Sahel

Zorom, Malicki; Barbier, Bruno; Mertz, Ole; Servat, Éric

doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2012.11.004

Cited by 50 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The majority of the Sahelian livelihood counts on these wet months to get by in the dry season. The management of existing natural resources by the local population has developed several strategies to cope with climatic difficulties, such as exploiting herd transhumance at the beginning of the dry season [2] or handling the seedling date in the beginning of the rainy period [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaporative Fraction as an Indicator of Moisture Condition and Water Stress Status in Semi-Arid Rangeland Ecosystems

et al. 2014

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Rangeland monitoring services require the capability to investigate vegetation condition and to assess biomass production, especially in areas where local livelihood depends on rangeland status. Remote sensing solutions are strongly recommended, where the systematic acquisition of field data is not feasible and does not guarantee properly describing the spatio-temporal dynamics of wide areas. Recent research on semi-arid rangelands has focused its attention on the evaporative fraction (EF), a key factor to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) in the energy balance (EB) algorithm. EF is strongly linked to the vegetation water status, and works conducted on eddy covariance towers used this parameter to increase the performances of satellite-based biomass estimation. In this work, a method to estimate EF from MODIS products, originally developed for evapotranspiration estimation, is tested and evaluated. Results show that the EF estimation from low spatial resolution over wide semi-arid area is feasible. Estimated EF resulted in being well correlated to field ET measurements, and the spatial patterns of EF maps are in agreement with the well-known climatic and landscape Sahelian features. The preliminary test on rangeland biomass production shows that satellite-retrieved EF as a water availability factor significantly increased the capacity of a remote sensing operational product to detect the variability of the field biomass measurements.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaporative Fraction as an Indicator of Moisture Condition and Water Stress Status in Semi-Arid Rangeland Ecosystems

et al. 2014

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“…Land-use diversification is one of the objectives as diversification per se is an adaptation strategy (Zoroma et al 2013) and it turned out to be relevant during the participatory process. In order to solve this multi-objective problem, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model was utilized, where the objective function is:…”

Section: Scoring and Ranking Of Adaptation Options In The Mcamentioning

confidence: 99%

Building resilience to water scarcity in southern Spain: a case study of rice farming in Doñana protected wetlands

et al. 2013

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Agricultural water management needs to evolve in view of increased water scarcity, especially when farming and natural protected areas are closely linked. In the study site of Doñana (southern Spain), water is shared by rice producers and a world heritage biodiversity ecosystem. Our aim is to contribute to defining adaptation strategies that may build resilience to increasing water scarcity and minimize water conflicts among agricultural and natural systems. The analytical framework links a participatory process with quantitative methods to prioritize the adaptation options. Bottom-up proposed adaptation measures are evaluated by a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) that includes both socioeconomic criteria and criteria of the ecosystem services affected by the adaptation options. Criteria weights are estimated by three different methods-analytic hierarchy process, Likert scale and equal weights-that are then compared. Finally, scores from an MCA are input into an optimization model used to determine the optimal land-use distribution in order to maximize utility and land-use diversification according to different scenarios of funds and water availability. While our results show a spectrum of perceptions of priorities among stakeholders, there is one overriding theme that is to define a way to restore part of the rice fields to natural wetlands. These results hold true under the current climate scenario and even more so under an increased water scarcity scenario.

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“…Indeed, droughts are nothing new in the area, but the occurrence of severe droughts seems to be on the increase. According to Zorom et al (2012) rainfall in the Sahel started to decrease in the late 1960s and the region has experienced many periods of severe drought since the 1970s. According to Giannini et al (2008) the Sahel is affected by a shift to a drier climate that is tied to the global tropical sea surface temperature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These sectors, however, are highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. There is considerable historical evidence showing that extreme climatic conditions, especially droughts, have severely affected crop production (James, 2002;Ouedraogo et al, 2006;Barbier et al, 2009;Zorom et al, 2012) and have led to pastoralists to move out of their original agro-ecological zones (FAO, 2001). The local people in the region are now preoccupied with survival over-crop and livestock farming, as their main occupation and primarily source of livelihood are weather sensitive-based.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dirty droughts causing loss and damage in Northern Burkina Faso

Traoré

Owiyo

2013

IJGW

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Extreme droughts in the northern part of Burkina Faso are locally referred to as tundi, meaning 'dirty weather', because they severely disrupt people's livelihoods in the area. This article investigates the loss and damage from the tundi droughts that occurred in 2004 and 2010 in the Sahel Region. The study conducted field survey among households in ten villages. We found that people's reliance on transhumance has been decreasing over the last decades due to the lack of good pastures, competition over natural resources and corollary conflicts. Whereas transhumance was an effective way to deal with droughts and seasonality, decreased mobility and increased interdependence between cattle and crop production has made people more vulnerable in the event of extreme droughts. Evidences from the survey results show that the vast majority of the respondents experienced negative effects of recent tundi droughts on crops (96%) and livestock (87%). It is also found that such extreme droughts tend to have a cascading impact; they first cause a lack of water affecting seedling and crop yields, which then affects the availability of food for people and feed for livestock. This, in turn, further limits their capacity to cope with future droughts.

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Diversification and adaptation strategies to climate variability: A farm typology for the Sahel

Cited by 50 publications

References 31 publications

Evaporative Fraction as an Indicator of Moisture Condition and Water Stress Status in Semi-Arid Rangeland Ecosystems

Evaporative Fraction as an Indicator of Moisture Condition and Water Stress Status in Semi-Arid Rangeland Ecosystems

Building resilience to water scarcity in southern Spain: a case study of rice farming in Doñana protected wetlands

Dirty droughts causing loss and damage in Northern Burkina Faso

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