Parkland NPP now and in the future - Distinguishing parkland net primary production in Sudano-Sahel using in situ measurements and high resolution remote sensing for scenario building

Research Project, 2019 – 2023

Agroforestry parklands are the main source of food, fodder and fuel for subsistence farming communities in the Sudano-Sahel - one of the most food insecure regions in the world. This land use system integrates crop and livestock production in agricultural lands with a significant tree cover. The total annual output (as food, fodder and tree products) of these system is referred to as Net Primary Production (NPP). Recent analyses show that the demand for NPP in the region is rapidly increasing while the supply remains nearly constant. In this project we will study factors controlling NPP with the aim to enable optimization of land management and production capacity.

Our project, building on an experienced multidisciplinary group with the ambition to employ a PhD student from Burkina Faso, will provide novel agro-ecological knowledge critical to parkland management. We will i)quantify NPP supply of the three main parkland components; crops, trees and grasses, and relate it to several controlling factors, ii)develop a system for national scale NPP monitoring using free and high resolution satellite data, iii)build scenarios of future NPP supply and demand guided by our NPP assessments, population projections, climate scenarios and land stakeholder dialogues, iv)interact with land users and policy actors in workshops for evaluating feasibility of scenarios, hurdles and ways forward, and v)disseminate results through posters, YouTube-films and flyers in local languages.