Abstract. The leaf area index of Sahelian rangelands and related variables
such as the vegetation cover fraction, the fraction of absorbed
photosynthetically active radiation and the clumping index were measured
between 2005 and 2017 in the Gourma region of northern Mali. These
variables, known as climate essential variables, were derived from the
acquisition and the processing of hemispherical photographs taken along 1 km
linear sampling transects for five contrasted canopies and one millet field.
The same sampling protocol was applied in a seasonally inundated Acacia open
forest, along a 0.5 km transect, by taking photographs of the understorey and
the tree canopy. These observations collected over more than a decade, in a
remote and not very accessible region, provide a relevant and unique data
set that can be used for a better understanding of the Sahelian vegetation
response to the current rainfall changes. The collected data can also be
used for satellite product evaluation and land surface model development and
validation. This paper aims to present the field work that was carried out
during 13 successive rainy seasons, the measured vegetation variables, and
the associated open database. Finally, a few examples of data use are
shown. DOI of the referenced data set: https://doi.org/10.17178/AMMA-CATCH.CE.Veg_Gh.
Supplementary material to "Advancing land surface model development with satellite-based Earth observations"