Assessing natural resource management challenges in Senegal using data from participatory rural appraisals and remote sensing

This study demonstrates that there is a relationship between socioeconomic problems in parts of West Africa and remote-sensing-derived environmental information about the region (normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), net primary production (NPP), and gridded rainfall data). Further, it finds that using both remotely sensed data and site-specific information from participatory rural appraisal (PRA) reports enables an improved understanding of natural resource management problems in the region. The study uses 100 PRA reports as sources of data on socioeconomic and natural resource management problems in Senegal and The Gambia. Utilizing a binary variable to extract semi-quantitative information from the reports, the study examines 10 PRA tools for their usefulness. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.