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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 FROM AUTHOR]

When cash cropping leads to agricultural and livelihood changes in the Global South, concern about food security is common among policy makers. This is indeed the case in the Sikasso region of Mali, where many have suggested that the ubiquitous cash crop cotton is a cause of the unexpectedly high rates of malnutrition in the region. Using household and forest surveys, we found little evidence that cotton cultivation is associated with malnutrition or decreased food security at a household level, but we did find evidence of a coassociation between cotton cultivation, loss of natural capital, and malnutrition at the village level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article identifies key types of local institutions rural Alaska Native communities use to manage subsistence resources such as fish, game, and edible plants. Local institutions are the informal rules and norms communities use to manage these and other natural resources. Other scholars have mostly discussed them in the context of how they help subsistence users cope with ecological fluctuations in the abundance of certain species. The study presented here discusses them within a larger context of social and economic change. These local institutions were identified based on personal interviews with 62 active subsistence users in six different Yup'ik communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Western Alaska. Participant-observation in subsistence activities like fishing and gathering supplemented the interview material. The key local institutions involve resource harvesting, resource processing, and resource sharing. The analysis of interview and observation data show that local institutions help households and communities cope with fluctuations in harvest amounts due to ecological perturbations, formal management regulations, and high fuel prices. Although local institutions can be fragile in the face of market pressures, and rationale for some institutions are not known by the younger generation, the strong role of sharing suggests that Yup'ik local institutions are expected to persist as climatic, environmental, economic, and social change continues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Declining grazing lands threaten the livelihoods of Fulɓe herders in Burkina Faso and other parts of Africa. I used GIS to spatially represent ethnographic narratives about land use and land cover changes. In a place where maps were unavailable or treated as closely held community secrets, I used participatory mapping to offer participants the opportunity to control the process and resulting maps. Our project sought to understand environmental challenges from a fine-grained emic perspective using high-resolution satellite imagery and focus groups. I reflect on challenges of conducting fieldwork in one's home country, which made it easier to build relationships and interact with officials. At the same time, however, I faced the intersecting challenges of "being an outsider and a woman" as I interacted with Fulɓe men and that of being "too educated" in interacting with women.

The resettlement of herders in pastoral zones is often criticized for hindering pastoral mobility, which is essential to survival. We integrate narratives of conflict and environmental change with maps to demonstrate the complementarity between pastoral mobility - porous borders- and border demarcation - rigid borders. We use evidence from the Sondré-Est Pastoral Zone in southern Burkina Faso, where herders were voluntarily resettled near agricultural villages following the droughts of the 1970s. Over time, however, farmers encroached on the borders of the pastoral zone and surrounding grazing areas declined. This increased land-use disputes. Tensions were exacerbated by the fact that these communities kept maps as community secrets. We re-created the administrative boundaries of the pastoral zone to map land-use/land-cover changes and conflict hot spots. The maps show that conflicts happened along porous borders where agricultural fields encroached. Herders called for a clear demarcation of the border of the pastoral zone to preserve exclusive access to resources within it. Simultaneously, they also wanted to maintain shared access to other resources outside the pastoral zone. The herders' desire for both border clarity and some form of flexibility underlines the complementary between both processes, especially in times of resource scarcity and land-use conflict. The mystery around the maps helps sustain ambiguity that is key for pursuing both goals.