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Temporal Climate Variability and Staple Cereals in Southern Burkina Faso

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Abstract

Farming activities are the primary source of livelihood for agro-pastoral communities in the Sahel biogeographic zone in Burkina Faso. The climate variability and change have a direct impact on performance, quantity, and quality of staple cereals yields. Understanding how the crops respond to climate variability is crucial for ensuring adequate crops management and food security. Hence, this paper aims at investigating how different staple cereals respond to certain indicators of climate variability at inter-annual and inter-decadal levels in southern Burkina Faso. In our study, we use regression models and scatter plots. The model results show that climate variability has mixed effects on cereal yields. The study demonstrates the interdependencies among district-scale cereal yields in the study area including maize, sorghum, and millet casually associate with the inter-annual variation of selected climate variability indicators. Maize yields, for example, relate strongly to the rainfall amount variation (R2 = 51.8%) showing high moisture dependence during critical growth stages. Conclusions emphasize the adoption of efficient water conservation and utilization platforms, especially those that have evidently increased yields and strengthening of forecasts dissemination and related climate information services.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the Finish Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the World Agroforestry Centre under the BIODEV Project (Building Biocarbon and Rural Development in West Africa). We thank Dr. Richard Coe (ILRI/ICRAF) for input in computation and adjustment of variability descriptors and Dr. David Stern (University of Reading) for clarification in the interpretation of growing season descriptors. We also would like to acknowledge Dr. Jorge De Jesus of ISRIC for his assistance in the extraction of soil type information. We thank the National Meteorology Service of Burkina Faso for providing long-term daily climate data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intergrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Quartier Stadtmitte, Friedrichstraße 191 10117, Berlin, Germany

    Mwenda Borona

  2. Future Africa, University of Pretoria, South St, Koedoespoort 456-Jr, Pretoria, 0186, South Africa

    Cheikh Mbow

  3. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), ICRISAT West & Central Africa Regional Office, BP 320, Bamako, Mali

    Issa Ouedraogo

Authors
  1. Mwenda Borona
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  2. Cheikh Mbow
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  3. Issa Ouedraogo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mwenda Borona .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. TH Köln, Cologne, Germany

    Lars Ribbe

  2. TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Andreas Haarstrick

  3. Water Engineering and Management, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand

    Mukand Babel

  4. TH Köln, Cologne, Germany

    Sudeh Dehnavi

  5. University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    H. K. Biesalski

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Borona, M., Mbow, C., Ouedraogo, I. (2021). Temporal Climate Variability and Staple Cereals in Southern Burkina Faso. In: Ribbe, L., Haarstrick, A., Babel, M., Dehnavi, S., Biesalski, H.K. (eds) Towards Water Secure Societies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50653-7_10

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