The questionnaire was designed out of 15 interviews with researchers in Ghana on driving forces of land use change in the Upper East Region, conducted in November 2013.

The questionnaire was sent by e-mail to 28 researchers (juniors and seniors) within the WASCAL CRP. In total, 18 researchers responded (but one was skipped because of only a few filled answers). The questionnaire was based on closed questions and is characterized by two parts:

1. Current and future direct and indirect drivers of land use/cover change (LUCC) in the Upper East Region

Likert-scale: from 0 = no influence to 5 = very strong influence

3. Trends of land cover type under "business as usual"

Likert-scale: from -2 = significant decrease to +2 = significant increase

The answers are validated by the Delphi-approach which is used to reduce the variance by resending the questionnaire with the anonymous information of responses given by other participants. The participant is asked to reassess his response with regard to the judgement of other participants.

Drivers of LULCC can be roughly categorized as followed (drivers are overlapping and have been resorted later on):

Direct anthropogenic drivers:

• Traditional agricultural intensification: no fallow, without or with small amount of fertilizer, intercropping, slash and burn

• Modern agricultural intensification: no fallow, fertilizer input, occasional use of tractors, mainly monocrops

• Conservation agriculture: fallow, mulching and no tillage

• Improved crop varieties: hybrids and genetically modified

• Weeds: esp. striga

• Dry season gardening: small-scale irrigation with wells; bucket irrigation

• Irrigation with dams, rivers

• Bush fires

• Livestock: grazing effects

• Use of wood: cutting trees for firewood, charcoal or livestock feeding

• Mining activity: sand, gravel and stone extraction; as well as gold mining

• Population growth in rural area

• Urbanisation: urban population growth including in-migration

• Out-migration: residents out of the UER longer than one season

• Labour availability for farming

• Others

Biophysical drivers:

• Soil type: natural capacity for water and nutrient storage

• Topography: the influence of hilltop, slope, valley

• Increasing rainfall variability

• Increasing temperature variability

• Increasing variability in wind intensity

Cultural/economic drivers:

• Changes in religious pattern: e.g. importance of sacrifices and sacred places

• Gender: male or female farmer (e.g. land use rights)

• Level of education

• Rising living standard

• Improved road network

• Money availability for farming (by rural farmers)

• Distance from crop to housing

• Foreign agricultural medium-scale investments

• Tourism

Political/economic drivers:

• Governmental laws: e.g. laws on riverine buffer zone

• National agricultural programmes: e.g. out-grower schemes

• Service by extension officers

• Fertilizer subsidies

• Credits by family, bank, government or NGO

• Customary land tenure system; focus on land security

• Science and research

• International funding/ development aid

• Others

Following land cover/use types and crop types have been asked for its increase or decrease:

Land use/cover types:

• Cropland: farming area for staple crops and cash crops

• Grassland/grazing land: grass species are dominating with occasional shrubs and trees; can be used as pasture

• Bush savanna: shrubs, single trees, savanna grasses

• Tree plantations: tree cover > 70 %; e.g. fruit trees, fodder trees, timber

• Bare land: natural or degraded land without vegetation; can be sandy areas, land with iron concretes (laterite), rocks

• Water bodies: dams, lakes and rivers

• Urban area: sealed area is dominating; dense network of roads and houses

• Other land cover/use types

Crop types:

• Millet

• Sorghum and/or guinea corn

• Maize

• Soy beans

• Groundnuts

• Bambara beans

• Cowpeas

• Cotton

• Irrigated rice

• Rain-fed rice

• Irrigated vegetables

• Future crops: Sesame

• Other crop types