"Desertification" or "Greening"? Human-Environment Relationships in the Face of Climate Variability: Case Studies in Mauritania and Senegal

“荒漠化”还是“绿化”？

• 批准号: 0753486
• 负责人: Stefanie Herrmann
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-06-15 至 2013-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0753486&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Desertification; Greening; Human; Environment; Relationships

Beginning in the late 1960s, the West African Sahel zone repeatedly made headlines because of a number of environmental and economic problems that manifest themselves in changes in land cover. While these changes often were referred to as "desertification," scientists did not develop consensus regarding the exact meaning of this notion, the mechanisms governing it, and the extent of the problem in the Sahel. Recent remote sensing-based studies have shown an overall greening trend in parts of the Sahel, which might indicate that positive developments have been going on. The meaning of "greening" is as vague as that of "desertification," however, and its implications on the ground are far from clear and unambiguous. This research project will develop empirical evidence that will inform basic understanding of the interactions among land use, land cover, and people's livelihoods in the face of variable and unpredictable rainfall in contrasting study sites in two Sahelian countries, Mauritania and Senegal. The investigators will adopt a cross-disciplinary perspective and borrow methods from the natural and social sciences in order to approach this complex research problem. They will use remote sensing techniques to measure and map current and past land-cover changes, relate them to rainfall data, conduct a variety of focus group discussions to reconstruct current and past land-use and management practices, georeference different land-use units in the study sites, and investigate how decision making on land use and management by different resource user groups takes into account environmental constraints and opportunities. They also will assess how land use and management affects land cover measured by remote sensing. Defining a range of resource user groups and teasing out and quantifying linkages between them and their biophysical environment will lay the ground work for future integration of land-use decision making with spatially explicit models of environmental change.This project will help enhance basic understanding of human and natural systems in dryland environments, particularly the relative contributions of human behavior and climate variability to land- use and land-cover change. The project results may help break the gridlock in the desertification debate by deepening understanding of the driving forces influencing desertification and greening. Moreover, identifying economically viable and environmentally sustainable land-use strategies under climate variability might be used to help communities and aid agencies to make more informed resource management decisions.

从 20 世纪 60 年代末开始，西非萨赫勒地区由于一系列以土地覆盖变化为表现的环境和经济问题而多次成为头条新闻。 虽然这些变化通常被称为“荒漠化”，但科学家们并没有就这一概念的确切含义、治理机制以及萨赫勒地区问题的严重程度达成共识。 最近基于遥感的研究显示萨赫勒部分地区总体呈绿化趋势，这可能表明积极的进展正在发生。 然而，“绿化”的含义与“荒漠化”一样模糊，其实际含义也远非清晰明确。 该研究项目将开发经验证据，帮助人们基本了解在毛里塔尼亚和塞内加尔两个萨赫勒国家的对比研究地点面临多变且不可预测的降雨时，土地利用、土地覆盖和人民生计之间的相互作用。 研究人员将采用跨学科的视角，借鉴自然科学和社会科学的方法来解决这一复杂的研究问题。 他们将使用遥感技术来测量和绘制当前和过去的土地覆盖变化，将其与降雨数据联系起来，进行各种焦点小组讨论以重建当前和过去的土地利用和管理实践，对研究地点的不同土地利用单元进行地理参考，并调查不同资源使用者群体的土地利用和管理决策如何考虑环境限制和机会。 他们还将评估土地利用和管理如何影响遥感测量的土地覆盖。 定义一系列资源使用者群体，梳理和量化他们与其生物物理环境之间的联系，将为未来将土地利用决策与环境变化的空间明确模型相结合奠定基础。该项目将有助于增强对旱地环境中人类和自然系统的基本了解，特别是人类行为和气候变异对土地利用和土地覆盖变化的相对贡献。 该项目的结果可能有助于通过加深对影响荒漠化和绿化的驱动力的理解来打破荒漠化辩论的僵局。 此外，在气候变化的情况下确定经济上可行和环境上可持续的土地利用战略可能有助于帮助社区和援助机构做出更明智的资源管理决策。