Desertification or Re-Greening Adaptation Lessons Learned in Coping with Late 20th Century Drought in West Africa

The NASA-ROSES SERVIR Applied Sciences Team program element highlights desertificationas a challenge unique to West Africa, and encourages studies that connect this challenge toclimate analysis. Two scientific advances of the past ~10 years speak to this connection,6motivating the research proposed here: (1) attribution of late-20th century Sahel drought to changes in the surface temperature of the global oceans, and (2) characterization of the re-greening, a regional upward trend in remotely sensed vegetation cover. The former invalidates the need to invoke man-made land degradation to explain drought persistence. The latter challenges the desertification narrative head on, and opens up consideration of a positive human impact on land cover in response to the drought crisis.In this context we propose to translate the advances already made in climate research and those within reach of this project into information of relevance to policy dialogue and development practice at the intersection of natural resources management and climate change adaptation inWest Africa. We seek to develop applied science and tools that can inform decisions in response to concerns around adaptation to a climate that has already become more erratic, on intra-seasonal as well as interannual time scales. Engagement with the SERVIR West Africa Hub will take the form of: 1.collaboration in applied climate research 2.transfer and co-development of IT solutions to facilitate production and dissemination of climate information 3.knowledge-sharing [e.g., in adaptation/natural resources management strategies] 4.capacity-building for Hub staff and for users of the information that the Hub produces, and5.policy dialogues around near-term projections of climate change with constituents of the SERVIR West Africa Hub community