scholarly journals Building Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience through Soil Organic Carbon Restoration in Sub-Saharan Rural Communities: Challenges and Opportunities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 10966
Author(s):  
Alex Taylor ◽  
Maarten Wynants ◽  
Linus Munishi ◽  
Claire Kelly ◽  
Kelvin Mtei ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Health ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Soil Function ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Soc Stocks

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is widely recognised as pivotal in soil function, exerting important controls on soil structure, moisture retention, nutrient cycling and biodiversity, which in turn underpins a range of provisioning, supporting and regulatory ecosystem services. SOC stocks in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are threatened by changes in land practice and climatic factors, which destabilises the soil system and resilience to continued climate change. Here, we provide a review of the role of SOC in overall soil health and the challenges and opportunities associated with maintaining and building SOC stocks in SSA. As an exemplar national case, we focus on Tanzania where we provide context under research for the “Jali Ardhi” (Care for the Land) Project. The review details (i) the role of SOC in soil systems; (ii) sustainable land management (SLM) techniques for maintaining and building SOC; (iii) barriers (environmental, economic and social) to SLM implementation; and (iv) opportunities for overcoming barriers to SLM adoption. We provide evidence for the importance of site-specific characterisation of the biophysicochemical and socio-economic context for effective climate adaptation. In particular, we highlight the importance of SOC pools for soil function and the need for practitioners to consider the type of biomass returns to the soil to achieve healthy, balanced systems. In line with the need for local-scale site characterisation we discuss the use of established survey protocols alongside opportunities to complement these with recent technologies, such as rapid in situ scanning tools and aerial surveys. We discuss how these tools can be used to improve soil health assessments and develop critical understanding of landscape connectivity and the management of shared resources under co-design strategies.

scholarly journals Doing research with police elites in Ghana

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 537-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Addo Sowatey ◽  
Justice Tankebe
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Informal Social Networks ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Senior Officers

Much of our methodological insights from researching policing in sub-Saharan Africa comes from studies of frontline officers. Consequently, many important methodological questions about research on senior police officers remain unanswered. This article addresses this gap by drawing on insights from interviewing senior officers in Ghana. It focuses on the challenges and opportunities in negotiating access, establishing trust during interviews and dealing with ethical dilemmas. We highlight the role of informal social networks and cultural practices of surprise visits, what we have termed strategic ambush, in securing formal approval for our research. However, this represented mere or putative access for which deference towards institutional gatekeepers was key to its actualization. Deference towards officers and extensive knowledge of the policing environment helped to put the senior officers at ease, and enhanced the chances of a successful interview. Finally, we offer reflections on our responses to unexpected ethical dilemmas that we faced in the field.

Modelling impacts of climate change and alternative management interventions on the multi-functionality of agricultural landscapes in southern Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reimund Roetter ◽  
Simon Scheiter ◽  
Munir Hoffmann ◽  
Kwabena Ayisi ◽  
Paolo Merante ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
Crop Models ◽  
Landscape Level

<p><span><span>On the background of increasing welfare and continued population growth, there is an ever-increasing pressure on land and other natural resources in many parts of the world. The situation is, however, particularly severe in the drylands of Sub-Saharan Africa. Southern African landscapes, composed of arable lands, tree orchards and rangelands, provide a range of important ecosystem functions. These functions are increasingly threatened by land use changes through competing claims on land by agriculture, tourism, mining and other sectors, and by environmental change, namely climate change and soil degradation. Among others, climate models project that drought risk in the region will increase considerably. Based on comprehensive data sets originating from previous groundwork by several collaborative projects on the functioning of these ecosystems, a number of biophysical and bio-economic models have been developed and evaluated. In the framework of the South African Limpopo Landscapes network (SALLnet) we have now refined and tailored these models for combined use for the assessment of changes in multiple functions of the prevailing agroecosystems when affected by alternative climate and land management scenarios - from field to regional scale. We apply vegetation models (such as aDGVM), crop models (such as APSIM) and integrative farm level models (e.g. agent-based) for different farming systems in conjunction with geo-referenced databases. Model outputs are combined to assess the impact of management x environment interactions on various ecosystem functions. Of special interest in our study are the ecosystem services related to the provision of food, feed and fuel, soil and water conservation, as well as recycling and restoring carbon and nutrients in soil. To illustrate how the combination of various modelling components can work in assessing management intervention effects under different environmental conditions on landscape level ecosystem services, a case study was defined in Limpopo province, South Africa. We investigated effects of current management practices and an intensification scenario over a longer period of years on soil organic carbon change under rangeland and arable land, potential erosion, productive water use, biomass production, monthly feed gaps, and rangeland habitat quality. Tentative results showed that sustainable intensification closed the livestock feed gap, but further reduced soil organic carbon. More generally, coupling the output of vegetation and crop models regionally calibrated with sound ground/ experimental data appears promising to provide meaningful insights into the highly complex interconnections of different ecosystem services at a landscape level.</span></span></p>

scholarly journals Divergent controls of soil organic carbon between observations and process-based models

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Georgiou ◽  
Avni Malhotra ◽  
William R. Wieder ◽  
Jacqueline H. Ennis ◽  
Melannie D. Hartman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon ◽  
Primary Productivity ◽  
Net Primary Productivity ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Mean Annual Temperature ◽  
Biogeochemical Models ◽  
Soc Stocks ◽  
Process Based Models

AbstractThe storage and cycling of soil organic carbon (SOC) are governed by multiple co-varying factors, including climate, plant productivity, edaphic properties, and disturbance history. Yet, it remains unclear which of these factors are the dominant predictors of observed SOC stocks, globally and within biomes, and how the role of these predictors varies between observations and process-based models. Here we use global observations and an ensemble of soil biogeochemical models to quantify the emergent importance of key state factors – namely, mean annual temperature, net primary productivity, and soil mineralogy – in explaining biome- to global-scale variation in SOC stocks. We use a machine-learning approach to disentangle the role of covariates and elucidate individual relationships with SOC, without imposing expected relationships a priori. While we observe qualitatively similar relationships between SOC and covariates in observations and models, the magnitude and degree of non-linearity vary substantially among the models and observations. Models appear to overemphasize the importance of temperature and primary productivity (especially in forests and herbaceous biomes, respectively), while observations suggest a greater relative importance of soil minerals. This mismatch is also evident globally. However, we observe agreement between observations and model outputs in select individual biomes – namely, temperate deciduous forests and grasslands, which both show stronger relationships of SOC stocks with temperature and productivity, respectively. This approach highlights biomes with the largest uncertainty and mismatch with observations for targeted model improvements. Understanding the role of dominant SOC controls, and the discrepancies between models and observations, globally and across biomes, is essential for improving and validating process representations in soil and ecosystem models for projections under novel future conditions.

scholarly journals Soil properties override climate controls on global soil organic carbon stocks

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhongkui Luo ◽  
Raphael Viscarra-Rossel
Keyword(s):  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Properties ◽  
Physiochemical Properties ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon Stocks ◽  
Global Soil ◽  
Climate Controls ◽  
Edaphic Properties ◽  
Soc Stocks

Abstract. Soil organic carbon (SOC) accounts for two-thirds of terrestrial carbon. Yet, the role of soil physiochemical properties in regulating SOC stocks is unclear, inhibiting reliable SOC predictions under land use and climatic changes. Using legacy observations from 141,584 soil profiles worldwide, we disentangle the effects of biotic, climatic and edaphic factors (a total of 30 variables) on the global spatial distribution of SOC stocks in four sequential soil layers down to 2 m. The results indicate that the 30 variables can explain 70–80 % of the global variance of SOC in the four layers, to which edaphic properties contribute ~ 60 %. Soil lower limit is the most important individual soil properties, positively associated with SOC in all layers, while climatic variables are secondary. This dominant effect of soil properties challenges current climate-driven framework of SOC dynamics, and need to be considered to reliably project SOC changes for effective carbon management and climate change mitigation.

The role of farmers' perceptions in coping with climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadia Chérif ◽  
Walter Leal Filho ◽  
Ulisses M. Azeiteiro
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 149-158
Author(s):  
Jade S. Sasser
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Global South ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Youth Population ◽  
Sub Saharan

The concluding chapter turns to the questions and observations that initially motivated this project: the role of women in sub-Saharan Africa, whom population advocates claim to represent. It raises questions about the links between contemporary investment in global South girls, instrumental gender and climate change solutions, and sexual stewardship, demonstrating how development-led concepts of women’s agency elide the contexts of their everyday lives. It concludes, not by offering solutions, but by fretting over the role of youth population advocacy, the politics and possibilities of their engagements with this work, raising questions about whether and how young people can transform populationist ideas into something closer to the social justice they seek.

scholarly journals Family Physician Perceptions of Climate Change, Migration, Health, and Healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Exploratory Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. 6323
Author(s):  
Charlotte Scheerens ◽  
Els Bekaert ◽  
Sunanda Ray ◽  
Akye Essuman ◽  
Bob Mash ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
Primary Healthcare ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
And Migration

Although family physicians (FPs) are community-oriented primary care generalists and should be the entry point for the population’s interaction with the health system, they are underrepresented in research on the climate change, migration, and health(care) nexus (hereafter referred to as the nexus). Similarly, FPs can provide valuable insights into building capacity through integrating health-determining sectors for climate-resilient and migration-inclusive health systems, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Here, we explore FPs’ perceptions on the nexus in SSA and on intersectoral capacity building. Three focus groups conducted during the 2019 WONCA-Africa conference in Uganda were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using an inductive thematic approach. Participants’ perceived interactions related to (1) migration and climate change, (2) migration for better health and healthcare, (3) health impacts of climate change and the role of healthcare, and (4) health impacts of migration and the role of healthcare were studied. We coined these complex and reinforcing interactions as continuous feedback loops intertwined with socio-economic, institutional, and demographic context. Participants identified five intersectoral capacity-building opportunities on micro, meso, macro, and supra (international) levels: multi-dimensional and multi-layered governance structures; improving FP training and primary healthcare working conditions; health advocacy in primary healthcare; collaboration between the health sector and civil society; and more responsibilities for high-income countries. This exploratory study presents a unique and novel perspective on the nexus in SSA which contributes to interdisciplinary research agendas and FP policy responses on national, regional, and global levels.

scholarly journals Differential long-term effects of climate change and management on stocks and distribution of soil organic carbon in productive grasslands

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1055-1096 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. G. De Bruijn ◽  
P. Calanca ◽  
C. Ammann ◽  
J. Fuhrer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Organic C ◽  
Soil C ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Soc Stocks

Abstract. We studied the impact of climate change on the dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in productive grassland systems undergoing two types of management, an intensive type with frequent harvests and fertilizer applications and an extensive system where fertilization is omitted and harvests are fewer. The Oensingen Grassland Model was explicitly developed for this study. It was calibrated using measurements taken in a recently established permanent sward in Central Switzerland, and run to simulate SOC dynamics over 2001–2100 under three climate change scenarios assuming different elements of IPCC A2 emission scenarios. We found that: (1) management intensity dominates SOC until approximately 20 yr after grassland establishment. Differences in SOC between climate scenarios become significant after 20 yr and climate effects dominate SOC dynamics from approximately 50 yr after establishment, (2) carbon supplied through manure contributes about 60% to measured organic C increase in fertilized grassland. (3) Soil C accumulates particularly in the top 10 cm soil until 5 yr after establishment. In the long-term, C accumulation takes place in the top 15 cm of the soil profile, while C content decreases below this depth. The transitional depth between gains and losses of C mainly depends on the vertical distribution of root senescence and root biomass. We discuss the importance of previous land use on carbon sequestration potentials that are much lower at the Oensingen site under ley-arable rotation and with much higher SOC stocks than most soils under arable crops. We further discuss the importance of biomass senescence rates, because C balance estimations indicate that these may differ considerably between the two management systems.

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