A cartographic change on the work I did with Action Contre la Faim mapping biomass. This map uses contrasts to highlight the agro-pastoral zone (seen here in Purple). The map was also designed to be colourblind-friendly.
These rasters show recurrent biomass deficits in West Africa between 2015 and 2019. The idea is to show areas at risk of desertification by focusing on recent years of continued degradation. Desertification as a concept has a number of different definitions, many of which are divergent. As a result, this dataset and map may not fit within a specific user’s definition of choice. The goal of this map is not to offer a new definition of desertification or to provide a new lens with which to view it. Rather, the idea is to highlight areas where biomass production is suffering from multi-year degradation.
Continue reading “Desertification in the Sahel”
Client/Employer: ACF
During the 2017/2018 Sahelian drought, surface water in pastoral zones was acutely scarce, worsening conditions for livestock herds who depended on lakes and ponds for water.
Using 1km imagery from Proba-V, an “Accessibility” anomaly was calculated (visible in the lower-right corner of the infographic). This showed the presence of surface water for the current year, compared with the average area of surface water for the same zone between the 1998-2017 period. Areas shaded in blue were in excess of the average and red areas in deficit. The darkest red areas were completely absent of surface water.
This was then complemented with Sentinel 2 imagery taken from Sentinel Hub’s EO Browser to show the difference between 2016 and 2017.
From 2014-2019, I managed Action Contre la Faim’s Pastoral Early Warning System for West Africa. More information can be found on the web portal for the service: www.sigsahel.info
