AbstractThe history of vegetation and land use in western Africa includes a pattern of environmental change that can best be described as gradual, subtle, and difficult to measure accurately. As compared, for example, with the process of large-scale felling in Amazonia, deforestation in this context is not readily amenable to analysis and quantification. Local ethnographic, ecological, and ethnohistorical techniques, however, can be used to develop the information required to advance our understanding of the processes of land use and forest change in the region. In this article, research into the contemporary ecology and ethnography of one swidden fanning group, the Susu of Sierra Leone, is combined with historical reconstruction and ethnohistorical documentation of the area, beginning with the visit of the Portuguese Jesuit Priest Fr Balthazar Barreira in 1516. Later documentary sources include the journal of the British_staff sergeant Brian O'Beirne, who explored the road from Freetown to the Fouta Jallon in 1821, and an account of a regional tour by the colonial traveller Frederick Migeod in 1922. These and other data are used to determine how present production systems cause processes of forest change, to assess the extent to which present production systems reflect the past, and to determine how past systems have affected the environment and changed and evolved over time.
The history of vegetation and landscapes of the lake Ilchir basin for understanding the modern vegetation structure in the Okinsky plateau