Journal of Earth Science & Climatic Change
Open Access

Abstract

Agro-forestry parkland represents the predominant farming system in West Africa. This is due to the multiple goods and services they provide at local as well as regional to global scales. In the Sudan Savanna of West Africa, these parklands provide food, wood, and various non-timber forest products. At the regional to global scales, they contribute to both carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling. With their power for carbon sequestration and cycling, parklands play a crucial role respectively for climate change mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sustaining soil fertility through nutrients cycling. In fact, their regular monitoring and assessment along with reproducible methodologies for this purpose are needed. This study aims to contribute to filling this gap, by measuring carbon pools in West African Sudan savanna agro-forestry parkland. In the Dassari watershed in north western Benin, we measured the below and above ground carbon pools at farmer plot levels and extrapolated them to catchment level. The results suggest that agro-forestry parklands are valuable sources for carbon sequestration and cycling and therefore important for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Biography

Email: L.issoufou@cgiar.org