Landscape restoration and greening in Africa

Abstract

As a reaction to ongoing environmental change, many local land restoration projects have emerged that aim to prevent or reverse land degradation, combat climate change through carbon sequestration or improve the local climate. However, the contribution of these projects to the greening of Africa at larger scales is still unknown due to the absence of a (public) complete database of land restoration projects, the lack of monitoring and the low survival rate of planted vegetation. Here, we use climate independent greening time series to detect local greening hotspots in Africa. We find that 2.1% of Africa, an area of roughly 400 000 km2, experiences local greening, especially in semi-arid environments. We show that various forms of sustainable land management (SLM) lead to significant local greening and demonstrate that some forms, e.g. active revegetation, are more effective than others, e.g. natural regeneration. This study, therefore, provides a first continental-scale insight in the greening potential of land restoration, which is needed for a thorough understanding of the effectiveness of SLM.