GC016-06
Regreening and Building Resilience Through Community Led Tree Planting: A Remote Sensing Analysis

Monday, 7 December 2020: 10:42
Virtual
Joshua Buxton1, Tom Powell2, Guy Lomax3, Rudy Arthur3, Arwen Nicholson3, Chris Boulton2, Kirsten Lees1, Hywel Williams3 and Tim Michael Lenton2, (1)University of Exeter, Global Systems Institute, Exeter, EX4, United Kingdom, (2)University of Exeter, Global Systems Institute, Exeter, United Kingdom, (3)University of Exeter, Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Exeter, United Kingdom
Abstract:
Smallholder farmers across Africa face the dual threat of land degradation and climate change. The International Small Group and Tree Planting Program (TIST) promotes reforestation, carbon capture, agricultural education and gender-balanced leadership, and enables subsistence farmers to sell high-quality carbon credits internationally. TIST has over 90,000 members in four countries (Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and India), and has quantified impacts on all the SDGs, except for 14: Life Below Water. Our research uses Landsat 7 data to understand the environmental changes that TIST has created at the landscape level within the Mount Kenya and Aberdare region of Kenya.

For this study we have used remotely sensed data for 2000-2019 from the Landsat 7 satellite to assess trends in NDVI within and around TIST groves using the Google Earth Engine cloud computing software. This enables us to evaluate the impact that TIST has had on vegetation greenness, a proxy for plant productivity (SDG 15: life on land). We have also used the extensive dataset collected by TIST to analyse the amount of carbon sequestrated by 53,000 TIST farmers across spatial and environmental variables, and across tree species.

We show that tree planting and other activities implemented by TIST farmers has a demonstrable greening effect in TIST groves. This change is significantly different to the background level for agricultural land in the area, which has shown no overall change in greenness for 2000-2019. We also find evidence that TIST is responsible for a greening effect in the landscape surrounding TIST groves. It is suggested that these changes are linked to decreases in soil erosion, possible microclimatic effects as well as a reduction in pressure on local woodland as a source of firewood. We also find evidence of sites of woodland recovery linked to the actions of local TIST groups. This suggests that in addition to carbon sequestration, community-led agroforestry through TIST is exerting a positive landscape-level influence on vegetation condition in line with SDG 15, which can be identified with remotely sensed data.

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