University of North Carolina (UNC) ecological anthropologist Colin Thor West will conduct research on land use and land cover change (LULCC) on ecological hotspots. The research will be focused on the northern Central Plateau of Burkina Faso, a place long recorded by experts as a textbook example of anthropogenic desertification. This region is part of the larger Sahel where population pressure and droughts are causing widespread environmental harm. More recent analyses, however, have documented a reversal in this process. Satellite imagery has detected a process of "greening" in the Sahel and it is particularly pronounced on the northern Central Plateau. Thus, there are conflicting interpretations of human-environment dynamics that generally describe either a widespread and uniform trajectory of environmental degradation (desertification) or a similarly homogeneous trajectory of environmental rehabilitation (greening).
Previous ethnographic fieldwork by the PI suggests that both processes are occurring simultaneously but in different places at different points in time. Using remote sensing techniques, this proposed research will identify social-ecological hotspots where negative (degrading) and positive (rehabilitating) human-environment interactions are occurring. Thus, it will show that land degradation/rehabilitation are ultimately patchy and discontinuous processes that co-occur within the same landscape.
Dr. West will develop basic skills in remote sensing analysis through training at UNC?s Landscape Ecology and Biogeography Lab. Dr. Aaron Moody, an associate professor in UNC's Department of Geography, will mentor him in data acquisition, processing and analysis. The research will produce a spatially and temporally explicit dataset of vegetation, rainfall, and population that identifies social-ecological hotspots, which will enable development organizations and government agencies to better target assistance.
