Satellite Mapping of Land Degradation In Senegal, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania

We used trends in primary productivity independent of climate variability, a necessity of land degradation determinations where water availability limits plant growth, to identify and map degraded land. To verify our mapping work, we (1) used Landsat data for the areas identified and compared histograms before and after our time series residual analysis detected areas of land degradation; and (2) formed commercial satellite image mosaics for Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Tanzania to disaggregate our land degradation determinations to the 1 m scale.