Geospatial Based Approaches for Monitoring and Assessing Natural Resources in Senegal

Abdoul Aziz Diouf

Centre de Suivi Ecologique, Dakar

Abstract: Natural resources play a very important role in the lives of Sahelian communities, particularly in feeding livestock in pastoral areas. However, given the current situation of climate change, the availability of these resources is difficult to predict in relation to the high spatial and intra-annual variability of rainfall conditions that largely drive the state of ecosystems in arid and semi-arid environments. This is in addition to the anthropogenic actions that generally cause the occurrence of bush fires. In this context, applications based on remote sensing indices such as the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are generally used in Senegal to monitor environmental conditions and evaluate natural resources. The derived products of this monitoring are very useful for end-users (i.e. natural resources managers) and decision makers.

Bio: Abdoul Aziz Diouf (male) has a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and Management from the University of Liège (Belgium). He is currently working at the Centre de Suivi Ecologique (CSE) in Dakar (Senegal) as a researcher and coordinator of the research and development program. He is also Researcher of the Pastoralism and Drylands Pole (PPZS) in West Africa. Diouf’s key skills are: (i) Acquisition, processing and analysis of temporal series of satellite images; (ii) Statistical modelling of forage biomass production and crop yields from earth observation data; and (iii) Landscape ecology and mapping of natural ecosystem variables. This justifies his contribution in the elaboration of the main outputs of the programs “Natural Resources Management & Food Security” and “Environmental Watch” of the CSE. Diouf was Chapter Scientist for Chapter 5 (Food Security) of the special report on Climate Change and the Land that was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in August 2019. He is author of several publications in peer-reviewed journals and has been a supervisor of several Masters’ theses and a jury examiner for doctoral theses.