Ground Truthing Greening Through GIS: A Microstudy of Soil and Water Conservation in Burkina Faso

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • June 15, 2020
Creator
  • Benecky, Sarah
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Anthropology
Abstract
  • The Sahel region is a semi-arid climatic zone situated at the southern border of the Sahara Desert. The region is commonly associated with the process of desertification; however, beginning in the early 1980s, rainfall in the Sahel significantly increased, consequently increasing its vegetation. This process has been labeled as the “greening” of the Sahel. This phenomenon of greening has been majorly documented through broad, top-down analysis of satellite images that span the entirety of the Sahel, yet it has rarely been understood at a local level. As a response to droughts and land degradation in Burkina Faso, there have been widespread environmental initiatives among farmers to transform degraded soil by constructing low barriers of rock by way of Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) projects. I argue that a more in-depth analysis of local SWC projects is essential in explaining more about the greening of the Sahel. Through an examination of high-resolution satellite images, I argue that SWC contributes to greening within Burkina Faso. In order to investigate this relationship, I analyze high-resolution satellite images of three different villages in Burkina Faso through Geographic Information System (GIS) software to investigate the spatial relationship between SWC and tree cover.
Date of publication
Keyword
DOI
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • West, Colin
Degree
  • Bachelor of Arts
Academic concentration
  • Anthropology
Honors level
  • Honors
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2018
Language
  • English

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details 2018_Benecky.pdf 2020-06-15 Public Download