CNH: Hydrology, Ecology, and Pastoral Societies in the Sahel: Ephemeral and Perennial Water Resources in a Dynamic Coupled System

非洲萨赫勒地区的牧场是非洲人民的重要放牧资源，为数百万动物提供季节性放牧。然而，该区域经常发生干旱，而且每年都存在相当大的不确定性，无法为牛提供饲料和地表水。该区域的许多小湖泊在雨季出现，但在旱季枯竭，数千年来，该区域的人类社会通过开发复杂的、经社会谈判的长距离放牧迁徙路线，组织和正式获得萨赫勒地区的放牧资源，以应对季节性的牛只用水供应。自1970年代和1980年代的旱灾以来，萨赫勒地区的水文和社会经济组织似乎正在发生变化，排入水池的水越来越多，有些地方现在常年为牛提供水。该项目将检验这样一种假设，即这些系统水平的变化是由干旱引发的，干旱减少了植被覆盖，并允许更多的水流入池塘。在某种程度上，一些湖泊变得足够深，可以持续整个旱季，在一些地区，历史上迁徙的社区通过在湖泊附近永久定居来做出回应。需要检验的第二个假设是，密集的放牧活动现在维持了这些流域的退化和径流水平，使常年湖泊状态和永久定居点永久化。这个项目探索了气候、植被动态、景观水文学和依赖和管理这些系统的人类社会之间的这些复杂的相互作用和反馈。在非洲，萨赫勒地区是一个重要的社会经济区域，对畜牧业生产很重要，但容易受到干旱和饥荒的影响。增加我们对萨赫勒地区人-自然耦合系统动态的了解，包括导致生态系统和社会经济功能迅速转变的过程，对弱势群体的福祉至关重要。该项目将向西非的政府、非政府组织、牧民和农业社区提供外联服务，扩大大学有关人与自然系统耦合的课程，并培训研究生和本科生。该项目包括与马里研究人员的重大国际合作，由国际科学和工程办公室的非洲、近东和南亚项目提供资金支持。

The grazing lands of the Sahel region of Africa are a vital grazing resource for the people of Africa, providing seasonal grazing for millions of animals. However, the region is subject to frequent droughts and considerable year-to-year uncertainty in availability of both fodder and surface water for cattle. Many small lakes in the region appear during the wet season but dry out during the dry season and, over millennia, human societies in the region responded to the seasonal availability of water for cattle by developing complex, socially-negotiated, long-distance herd-migration routes that organized and formalized access to the grazing resources of the Sahel. Since the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s the coupled hydrology and socioeconomic organization of the Sahel appears to be changing, with increasing drainage into pools that in some places now provide year-round water for cattle. This project will test the hypothesis that these system level changes were triggered by the drought which reduced vegetation cover and allowed increased water flows into pools. At a certain point, some lakes became deep enough to last through the dry season and, in some areas, the historically migratory communities responded by settling permanently near the lakes. A second hypothesis to be tested is that intense grazing activity now maintains a level of degradation and runoff in these watersheds that perpetuates the perennial lake state and permanent settlement. This project explores these complex interactions and feedbacks between climate, vegetation dynamics, landscape hydrology, and the human societies that depend on and manage these systems. In Africa, the Sahel is a socio-economically vital region, important for livestock production but vulnerable to drought and famine. Increasing our knowledge of coupled human-natural system dynamics in the Sahel, including the processes that lead to rapid transitions in ecosystem and socioeconomic function, is vital to the wellbeing of vulnerable populations. This project will provide outreach to governmental, non-governmental, pastoral and agricultural communities in West Africa, expand university curriculum on coupled human and natural systems, and train graduate and undergraduate students. This project includes a significant international collaboration with researchers in Mali that is supported by funding from Office of International Science and Engineering's Africa, Near East, and South Asia program.