EO AFRICA - Continental Demonstrator Luisa: Land Use Intensity’s Potential, Vulnerability and Resilience for Sustainable Agriculture in Africa

The long-term goal of ESALUISA is to develop a satellite-driven decision-support tools that informs national-scale carbon mitigation planning, i.e. the indicator framework “Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production” (HANPP). Africa is experiencing several socioecological changes that will fundamentally alter the location and extent of its croplands, grazing land, forests and built-up areas in the future. This shift will have a tremendous impact on the global carbon cycle. The population in Africa is growing far faster than in any other region of the world, by 2050 it will account for 65% of global population growth. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations and surface temperatures will continue to rise and precipitation is projected to become more variable. In particular, African drylands, such as the Sahel region, which support 75% of the continent’s agriculture, are highly susceptible to climate extremes (droughts and heat waves). Forests in Africa account for half of the interannual variability in global terrestrial CO2 emissions and the encroachment of smallholder farms into woody areas near urban centers is the number one driver of CO2 emissions on the continent. The project aims at establishing HANPP as an integrated macroscale socioecological indicator in order to advance the understanding of the drivers, dynamics and mechanisms of land use-carbon dynamics as well as their trade-offs, at the regional to continental scale in Africa.