During the 1970s, when severe droughts affected West African farmers, cereal banks became popular in the region. However, things quickly became very quiet again about this type of food security scheme, probably also because many of the cereal banks failed. Scientific surveys addressing the topic are scarce. A study in The Gambia in 2014 investigated how such cereal banks function and what the important variables for their success are.

This study revealed that local agro-pastoralists were quite aware of their own actions that could influence the changing abundance of the natural forage resources. Moreover, the local informants suggested means through which their rich LEK in the traditional management and regulation of plant resources including forage plants could be applied. This is necessary for them to tackle negative effects of the ecological drivers to changing forage plants communities especially crops. One of the topmost suggestions made by local agro-pastoralists was that cutting down of trees for charcoal production and fuel wood should be stopped, while afforestation of useful trees should be encouraged by fellow farmers to increase the frequency of rainfall incidences and increase soil fertility.

This table contains survey data regarding ecological drivers which influence changes in trends of forage species abundance in both Ghana and Burkina-Faso.

This table contains relevant socio-demographic variables of local agro-pastoralists(and including varying climatic aridity)and number of valuation criteria cited from 2012 to 2013. The number of valuation criteria for the rainy season, dry season, cattle, goats and sheep are captured in this table.

Recording local ecological knowledge (LEK) is a useful approach to understanding interactions of the complex social-ecological systems. In spite of the recent growing interest in LEK studies on the effects of climate and land use changes, livestock mobility decisions and other aspects of agro-pastoral systems, LEK on forage plants has still been vastly under-documented in the West African savannas. Using a study area ranging from northern Ghana to central Burkina Faso, we thus aimed at exploring how aridity and socio-demographic factors drive the distributional patterns of forage-related LEK among its holders. With stratified random sampling, we elicited LEK among 450 informants in 15 villages (seven in Ghana and eight in Burkina Faso) via free list tasks coupled with ethnobotanical walks and direct field observations. We performed generalized linear mixed-effects models (aridity- and ethnicity-based models) and robust model selection procedures. Our findings revealed that LEK for woody and herbaceous forage plants was strongly influenced by the ethnicity-based model, while aridity-based model performed better for LEK on overall forage resources and crop-related forage plants. We also found that climatic aridity had negative effect on the forage-related LEK across gender and age groups, while agro- and floristic diversity had positive effect on the body of LEK. About 135 species belonging to 95 genera and 52 families were cited. Our findings shed more light on how ethnicity and environmental harshness can markedly shape the body of LEK in the face of global climate change. Better understanding of such a place-based knowledge system is relevant for sustainable forage plants utilization and livestock production.

Table with sorghum leaf area index (LAI) time series (primary/raw) from central field experiment plots in the Vea catchment (one of main research sites in the WASCAL Core Research Program), Ghana, 2013.

This table contains survey data whether the forage resources cited by local agro-pastoralists were many, few or rare in numbers.

This document is a map of land and vegetation cover of the North Bank Region of the Gambia produced by the National Environment Agency of the Gambia (NEA). It is reproduced as a background map in 2015 by Constantine Kouevi, student WASCAL MRP-The Gambia, in her Master thesis. This study shows that there is a densification of human activities in this geographical space, which explains a high human concentration. Land management policies depend on the quality of natural resource management. This can lead to potential conflicts.

This table contains survey data whether the forage resources cited by local agro-pastoralists were increasing or decreasing rapidly or gradually or were being stable or they had no idea at all.

Table with sorghum phenology observations (primary/raw) from central field experiment plots in the Vea catchment (one of main research sites in the WASCAL Core Research Program), Ghana, 2013.