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Sahelian West Africa is a region that has high population densities and that has frequent severe droughts and enormous pressure on natural resources. Because of these challenges, it is the place where the term desertification was originally coined. Recently, however, experts have identified large zones of greening where the amount of vegetation exceeds what one would expect based on rainfall alone. This pattern is well documented, but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. This research employs participatory mapping linked with high-resolution satellite imagery to better understand the human role behind regional vegetation trends. Through a case study of three communities in northern Burkina Faso, this paper presents a pilot methodology for explicitly mapping perceived areas of both land degradation and rehabilitation. Combining participatory mapping exercises with standard image classification techniques allows areas of land degradation and rehabilitation to be precisely located and their extents measured for individual communities and their surrounding terroirs. Results of the spatial analysis show that the relative proportion of greening and browning varies among communities. In the case of Sakou, nearly 60 percent of its terroir is degraded. While in another, Kouka, this is 48 percent. This method also elicits perspectives of Burkinabè agro-pastoralists on the local land-use practices driving these twin environmental processes. Altogether, this case study demonstrates the analytical power of integrating ethnography and high-resolution satellite imagery to provide a bottom-up perspective on social-ecological dynamics. 

Abstract In this article we present results from transect walks and participatory mapping done in Burkina Faso. Since the Sahelian drought of the 1970s, researchers have continued to depict the Sahelian region of West Africa as an environment experiencing severe degradation; a narrative that persists over time. Recently, however, analyses of satellite imagery have identified remarkable patterns of greening across the Sahel. The causes of this greening are hotly debated. Through this project we aim to inform these debates with on-the-ground perceptions of local farmers and pastoralists. The transect walk method is a community-based process that collects information on the land-use/land-cover (LULC) features across villages. Transects help triangulate data by combining high-resolution satellite imagery, firsthand observations, and local experiences of ecological processes. We describe the methodology behind transects and discuss how they contextualize an otherwise removed process of environmental analysis. We also describe the challenges that arise throughout the fieldwork process.