Assessing the inter-relationship between vegetation productivity, rainfall, population and land cover over the Bani River Basin in Mali (West Africa)

    Traore, S S and Forkue, E K and Traore, P C S and Landmann, T (2015) Assessing the inter-relationship between vegetation productivity, rainfall, population and land cover over the Bani River Basin in Mali (West Africa). IOSR Journal of Engineering, 5 (6). pp. 10-18. ISSN 2278-8719

    [img] PDF - Published Version
    Restricted to ICRISAT users only
    Download (1MB) | Request a copy

    Abstract

    This research investigated the inter-relationship between vegetation productivity, measured using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), change in rainfall and population density in the context of perceived greening and degradation trends over the Bani River Basin (BRB). A 30-year (1982-2011), 8-km gridded rainfall data sets was produced by inverse distance weighted (IDW) interpolation of monthly data from 40 meteorological stations contained within the basin. Population data were retrieved from the National Population Statistic data base for 1987, 1997, and 2009. Rainfall and NDVI time-series trends were computed for the 30-year period and analysed. The relationship between rainfall and NDVI at pixel level, and NDVI and population densities was analysed using a Pearson correlation. Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) conversion rates were computed for the same period using multi-temporal 30-meter Landsat imagery; ground surveys for selected areas within the basin were used for further cross-verification. The computed NDVI trends revealed that, vegetation 'greening' trends are mostly associated with areas where natural vegetation is still well represented. Concurrent with increases in rainfall over the period analysed, this finding supports the hypothesis that re-greening observed in that area is the result of multi-decadal fluctuations in climate, rather than improved land management.

    Item Type: Article
    Divisions: RP-Resilient Dryland Systems
    CRP: CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Systems
    Uncontrolled Keywords: Vegetation productivity, Rainfall, Population, Inter-relationship, Mali
    Subjects: Others > Agriculture-Farming, Production, Technology, Economics
    Depositing User: Mr B K Murthy
    Date Deposited: 26 Feb 2016 04:14
    Last Modified: 26 Feb 2016 04:14
    URI: http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/9316
    Official URL:
    Projects: UNSPECIFIED
    Funders: UNSPECIFIED
    Acknowledgement: The authors are grateful to WASCAL programme for fully funding this research and LABOSEP Sotuba for helping in field data collection. This paper was presented in the International Conference on Enhancing Resilience to Climate and Ecosystem Changes in Semi-arid Africa, CECAR-Africa that was held in Tamale in August 6-8, 2014 under the title: Trends in NDVI and relationship with rainfall, population density and land use land cover change over the Bani River Basin, and now submitted for publication in this journal after modifications.
    Links:
    View Statistics

    Actions (login required)

    View Item View Item
    OAR@ICRISAT is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.