scholarly journals Analysis of climate signals in the crop yield record of sub-Saharan Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis L. Hoffman ◽  
Armen R. Kemanian ◽  
Chris E. Forest
Keyword(s):  
Crop Yield ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Climate Signals ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Yield Record

scholarly journals Agroforestry delivers a win-win solution for ecosystem services in sub-Saharan Africa. A meta-analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shem Kuyah ◽  
Cory W. Whitney ◽  
Mattias Jonsson ◽  
Gudeta W. Sileshi ◽  
Ingrid Öborn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Crop Yield ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Available Phosphorus ◽  
Woody Perennials ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Agroforestry Practices

Abstract Agricultural landscapes are increasingly being managed with the aim of enhancing the provisioning of multiple ecosystem services and sustainability of production systems. However, agricultural management that maximizes provisioning ecosystem services can often reduce both regulating and maintenance services. We hypothesized that agroforestry reduces trade-offs between provisioning and regulating/maintenance services. We conducted a quantitative synthesis of studies carried out in sub-Saharan Africa focusing on crop yield (as an indicator of provisioning services), soil fertility, erosion control, and water regulation (as indicators of regulating/maintenance services). A total of 1106 observations were extracted from 126 peer-reviewed publications that fulfilled the selection criteria for meta-analysis of studies comparing agroforestry and non-agroforestry practices (hereafter control) in sub-Saharan Africa. Across ecological conditions, agroforestry significantly increased crop yield, total soil nitrogen, soil organic carbon, and available phosphorus compared to the control. Agroforestry practices also reduced runoff and soil loss and improved infiltration rates and soil moisture content. No significant differences were detected between the different ecological conditions, management regimes, and types of woody perennials for any of the ecosystem services. Main trade-offs included low available phosphorus and low soil moisture against higher crop yield. This is the first meta-analysis that shows that, on average, agroforestry systems in sub-Saharan Africa increase crop yield while maintaining delivery of regulating/maintenance ecosystem services. We also demonstrate how woody perennials have been managed in agricultural landscapes to provide multiple ecosystem services without sacrificing crop productivity. This is important in rural livelihoods where the range of ecosystem services conveys benefits in terms of food security and resilience to environmental shocks.

Conservation agriculture with drip irrigation: Effects on soil quality and crop yield in sub-Saharan Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Assefa ◽  
M. Jha ◽  
M. Reyes ◽  
A.W. Worqlul ◽  
L. Doro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Quality ◽  
Crop Yield ◽  
Drip Irrigation ◽  
Conservation Agriculture ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Irrigation Effects

scholarly journals Climate Signals in River Flood Damages Emerge under Sound Regional Disaggregation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inga Sauer ◽  
Ronja Reese ◽  
Christian Otto ◽  
Tobias Geiger ◽  
Sven N. Willner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Climate Signal ◽  
Hazard Exposure ◽  
River Flood ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
Climate Signals ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Induced Changes

Abstract Climate change highly affects precipitation patterns. Here, we address the question whether the signal of climate change is already detectable in time series of reported damages caused by fluvial floods. Building on hazard indicators from process-based hydrological simulations, we develop an empirical model to reconstruct reported damages and quantify individual contributions of climate-induced changes in hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to observed trends. Across nine world regions, trends in damages are generally dominated by increasing exposure and decreasing vulnerability, with the latter being most pronounced in less developed regions. However, accounting for heterogeneity in changes of hazard frequency and magnitude within a region, a climate signal is detectable, especially in South and Sub-Saharan Africa as well as in Latin America. Damages in most regions are subject to a monotonous trend even after accounting for natural variability where an effect of long-term global warming can not yet be distinguished from a potential influence from multidecadal oscillations.

scholarly journals Climate signals in river flood damages emerge under sound regional disaggregation

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Inga J. Sauer ◽  
Ronja Reese ◽  
Christian Otto ◽  
Tobias Geiger ◽  
Sven N. Willner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
River Basins ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Climate Forcing ◽  
Eastern Asia ◽  
World Regions ◽  
The World ◽  
River Flood ◽  
Climate Signals ◽  
Flood Damages ◽  
Sub Saharan

AbstractClimate change affects precipitation patterns. Here, we investigate whether its signals are already detectable in reported river flood damages. We develop an empirical model to reconstruct observed damages and quantify the contributions of climate and socio-economic drivers to observed trends. We show that, on the level of nine world regions, trends in damages are dominated by increasing exposure and modulated by changes in vulnerability, while climate-induced trends are comparably small and mostly statistically insignificant, with the exception of South & Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Asia. However, when disaggregating the world regions into subregions based on river-basins with homogenous historical discharge trends, climate contributions to damages become statistically significant globally, in Asia and Latin America. In most regions, we find monotonous climate-induced damage trends but more years of observations would be needed to distinguish between the impacts of anthropogenic climate forcing and multidecadal oscillations.

scholarly journals Limitations of WRF land surface models for simulating land use and land cover change in Sub-Saharan Africa and development of an improved model (CLM-AF v. 1.0)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Glotfelty ◽  
Diana Ramírez-Mejía ◽  
Jared Bowden ◽  
Adrián Ghilardi ◽  
J. Jason West
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Land Surface Models ◽  
Surface Parameters ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Surface Models ◽  
Climate Signals ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Land Surface Parameters

Abstract. Land use and land cover change (LULCC) impacts local and regional climates through various biogeophysical processes. Accurate representation of land surface parameters in land surface models (LSMs) is essential to accurately predict these LULCC-induced climate signals. In this work, we test the applicability of the default Noah, Noah-MP, and CLM LSMs in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) over Sub-Saharan Africa. We find that the default WRF LSMs do not accurately represent surface albedo, leaf area index, and surface roughness in this region due to various flawed assumptions, including the treatment of the MODIS woody savanna LULC category as closed shrubland. Consequently, we developed a WRF CLM version with more accurate African land surface parameters (CLM-AF), designed such that it can be used to evaluate the influence of LULCC. We evaluate meteorological performance for the default LSMs and CLM-AF against observational datasets, gridded products, and satellite estimates. Further, we conduct LULCC experiments with each LSM to determine if differences in land surface parameters impact the LULCC-induced climate signals. Despite clear deficiencies in surface parameters, all LSMs reasonably capture the spatial pattern and magnitude of near surface temperature and precipitation. However in the LULCC experiments, inaccuracies in the default LSMs result in illogical localized temperature and precipitation climate signals. Differences in thermal climate signals between Noah-MP and CLM-AF indicate that the temperature impacts from LULCC are dependent on the sensitivity of evapotranspiration to LULCC in Sub-Saharan Africa. Errors in land surface parameters indicate that the default WRF LSMs considered are not suitable for LULCC experiments in tropical or Southern Hemisphere regions, and that proficient meteorological model performance can mask these issues. We find CLM-AF to be suitable for use in Sub-Saharan Africa LULCC studies, but more work is needed by the WRF community to improve its applicability to other tropical and Southern Hemisphere climates.

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