Assessing impacts of climate variability and land use/land cover change on the water balance components in the Sahel using Earth observations and hydrological modelling

Study region: Senegal river (SRB), Niger river (NRB), and Lake Chad basins (LCB). Study focus: We investigated the impacts of land use/land cover change (LULC) and climate variability on the water balance components from 1990 to 2020. We applied the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) coupled with remote sensing retrievals of actual...

Changes in vegetation greenness related to climatic and non-climatic factors in the Sudano-Sahelian region

The potential drivers of vegetation changes in the Sudano-Sahelian region of Africa remain poorly understood due to complex interactions between climatic and anthropogenic processes. In this study, we analyzed the vegetation greenness trends in relation to rainfall variability that we considered the essence of climatic effects on vegetation...

Calibration and Validation of SWAT Model by Using Hydrological Remote Sensing Observables in the Lake Chad Basin

Model calibration and validation are challenging in poorly gauged basins. We developed and applied a new approach to calibrate hydrological models using distributed geospatial remote sensing data. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was calibrated using only twelve months of remote sensing data on actual evapotranspiration (ETa)...

Modeling the underlying drivers of natural vegetation occurrence in west africa with binary logistic regression method

The occurrence of natural vegetation at a given time is determined by interplay of multiple drivers. The effects of several drivers, e.g., geomorphology, topography, climate variability, accessibility, demographic indicators, and changes in human activities on the occurrence of natural vegetation in the severe drought periods and, prior to...

Mapping land use land cover transitions at different spatiotemporal scales in West Africa

Post‐classification change detection was applied to examine the nature of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) transitions in West Africa in three time intervals (1975–2000, 2000–2013, and 1975– 2013). Detailed analyses at hotspots coupled with comparison of LULC transitions in the humid and arid regions were undertaken. Climate and anthropic drivers...