Abstract

Combining high resolution remotely sensed data on annual tree losses, land use, human activities and daily rainfall in a poor region mainly relying on agrarian systems and more precisely on rainfed agriculture, this paper estimates to which extent there is an impact of the quality of rainy season on tree loss and deforestation.

Bad rainy season are found to be followed by changes in the pressure on tree cover and deforestation, but contrarily to previous results those changes seem to vary spatially. It notably heavily depends upon the presence of agricultural land and of settlements doted with power infrastructures.Although a drought or a short rainy season can increase tree loss in remote areas in drylands, it is linked to lower pressure on forests in more connected areas also corresponding in our study areas to more humid zones.

The presence of protected areas, although alleviating such pressure in some areas, does no seem to stop smallholders farming pressure on land use. This result argues in favor of a positive effect of income on the pressure on land-use, validating that the region is still in the first half of the environmental Kuznet curve.

Practical information