SDSU scientists and students working with ecosystems in Mali

BROOKINGS, S.D. — Scientists at South Dakota State University will help subsistence livestock owners in West Africa respond to climate change and emerging land use patterns with USAID and National Science Foundation funding.

SDSU ecologist Niall Hanan’s project, “Climate change, pastoral resources and livestock in the Sahel: Developing a community-relevant pastoral prediction system,” will receive $700,000 over three and a half years to produce a modeling system that will help pastoralists respond successfully to climate and land use change. Hanan has worked on the ecology of savannas and grazing systems in Africa for more than 25 years, experience that helped acquire this new funding from the USAID-funded Livestock-Climate Change Collaborative Support Program based at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo.

Hanan recently joined the SDSU Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence that specializes in the use of remote sensing and geospatial information to address regional to global scale ecological and environmental problems. The project is a collaboration between SDSU, USGS EROS Data Center and partners in Mali.

According to Hanan, the project will use a mathematical modeling approach to understand how West African rangelands, and the livestock producers who depend on them, will be impacted by climate change and agricultural encroachment. He said that the USAID collaborative research support programs seek to enhance the translation of basic science into applications that have positive impacts on the livelihoods and food security of rural populations in less developed countries.

Livestock producers in West Africa have little or no information on how climate change will affect the quality and quantity of grazing vegetation or water resources vital to their livelihood, according to officials of the LCC-CRSP program. At the same time, changes in land use and agriculture compromise their ability to sustain a mobile lifestyle that relies on moving healthy herds between seasonal pastures. “The strategy for the project is to involve pastoral communities in defining questions, thus prioritizing their needs and uncertainties,” Hanan said. “Models for how pastoral resources will change with climate and land use change will provide the information they need to prepare for and adapt to future conditions.”

The new USAID funding for applied research will benefit from synergies with other SDSU research and education projects in West Africa.

For example, a summer school in Mali next year, funded with a National Science Foundation grant, will pair six SDSU undergraduate students with six undergraduate peers from the University of Bamako. The intent of the student research is to understand how savanna ecosystems function under changing climate and human management conditions, such as fire and grazing practices, information that will be directly useful for the pastoral prediction system.

A second, NSF research project is investigating how grazing and land use in West Africa impact landscape hydrology and pool formation in systems that are analogous to the Prairie Pothole region of the Dakotas. The involvement of SDSU faculty and students in these projects is contributing to growing collaboration on research, education and outreach between SDSU and the University of Bamako in Mali.

South Dakota State has a long history of international collaborations in Africa using remote sensing and geospatial information capabilities for resource assessment, including efforts during the 1970s and 80s in Senegal, Syria, Mauritania, Egypt, Gambia and Sudan led by the Remote Sensing Institute. During his term at State, former President Sherwood Berg initiated the Botswana Project to help establish a school and college of agriculture that resulted in numerous exchanges between the universities in ensuing years.

More recently, the GIScCE, established in 2006 in collaboration with the nearby EROS Data Center, has a strong international focus with students and faculty involved in research around the globe as well as in North America and in South Dakota.

About Livestock-Climate Change Collaborative Research Support ProgramEstablished in May 2010, LCC CRSP was established through a five-year, $15 million cooperative agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Livestock-Climate Change CRSP supports research projects that take an interdisciplinary research approach to problems in semi-arid regions to better the lives and livelihoods of small-scale livestock producers by developing strategies to help them cope with the impacts of climate change. For more information about LCC CRSP, visit www.lcccrsp.org.

About South Dakota State UniversityFounded in 1881, South Dakota State University is the state’s Morrill Act land-grant institution as well as its largest, most comprehensive school of higher education. SDSU confers degrees from eight different colleges representing more than 175 majors, minors and specializations. The institution also offers 29 master’s degree programs, 12 Ph.D. and two professional programs.

The work of the university is carried out on a residential campus in Brookings, at sites in Sioux Falls, Pierre and Rapid City, and through Cooperative Extension offices and Agricultural Experiment Station research sites across the state.