Written by Staff Writer
Efforts to identify which kinds of vegetation have the greatest impact on erosion are underway, after a new report found that the communities that house some of the worst-affected areas have also been least able to conserve their natural resources.
“It’s extremely difficult to predict the exact impact on erosion,” Elizabeth Green, an ecologist with the National Environment Laboratory of Ghana, told CNN. “We can only try to predict how it will impact the shoreline, or the overall health of the shoreline.”
According to the report, which is currently being interpreted by scientists from Ghana, Nigeria and France, the southern states of Northern Nigeria are currently worst affected by erosion. But it is not just the shoreline that is suffering from erosion in the region.
Wildfires are becoming common in west Nigeria. Dominic Foskey/UTAHNS.org
This is due to the depletion of crucial nutrients from the land — which help to stabilize sediment beneath the water table — and the reduction of wetland habitats that once supported important habitat for animals and plants.
“The less vegetation there is, the more exposed to dry weather those areas are, and thus the less moisture stays in the soil and builds up a protective cover for the shoreline,” Green said.
Wildfires — particularly in the western states — are becoming more frequent.
To counter this, some nearby communities are helping plant tens of thousands of trees in some of the most heavily-affected regions of Nigeria.
“A few years ago, I went into one of these areas to go into some very heavily erosion-prone areas,” Green said. “While I was there, I saw a couple of women who were planting trees. They were explaining that the vegetation around them was very helpful and that trees were so much appreciated because they helped provide that cover.”
Ecologists have named some of the areas in northern Nigeria as The ‘Olee-Okudu’ area. Dominic Foskey/UTAHNS.org
A response to the loss of this kind of cover, in combination with population pressures like land-use growth, heightened pollution and deforestation will pose the greatest long-term threat to the region’s biodiversity, the report claims.
Despite this, the report concludes that conservation efforts can prevent the worse-affected areas from “endangering” their communities.