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K4GGWA Platform

Welcome to the GGW Restoration Dashboard!

SDG 15.3.1 Alignment: The metrics below map to the UNCCD Land Degradation Neutrality framework, focusing on Land Productivity Dynamics while isolating climate-driven noise.
Regional Vegetation Trends (EVI slope) for 2001–2014 and 2015–2024
Location Filter
All countries in the GGW are showing warming trends... (click to expand)

Over the past seven decades, the Sahel has warmed by roughly 1.5–2 °C, with a consistent upward trend of ~0.2–0.3 °C per decade across both western and eastern parts of the region. Both mean temperatures and warm extremes have increased, with marked rises in hot days, warm nights, and heatwave frequency.

Data Sources
Climate — Temperature & Precipitation

Calculations from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA5 reanalysis and Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS).ERA5 hourly reanalysis (0.25° grid) from the Copernicus Climate Data Store. Monthly means aggregated to district level over the GGW belt, 1981–2024.

Vegetation — EVI and Land Productivity

Derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Enhanced Vegetation Index (MOD13Q1). Restrend calculations based on Evans & Geerken (2004).

Fire Frequency

Calculated from MODIS MCD64A1 Burned Area product, mapping the spatial distribution and frequency of fires.

Great Green Wall Country Comparison — Temperature Trends
Explore more in dedicated modules!

Climate Analysis

Understanding the spatial patterns of climate trends and short term weather events is important for assessments of climate risks across the GGW region. Some of the metrics we track in the dashboard include rainfall patterns, changes in number of rainy days, drought frequencies, and extreme weather events such as rainfall and flooding.
🌧️ Precipitation Trends • 📊 Climate Variability • 🌡️ Temperature Analysis

Vegetation Trends

Long-term vegetation (2001-2024) cover trends reveal climatic and human-induced ecosystem changes. Vegetation, or land cover, dynamics and trends allow us to track deforestation and other changes in land use, drought impacts, and restoration progress across the region.
🌿 NDVI Trends • 📈 Vegetation Health • 🌱 Restoration Monitoring

Land Health Dynamics

Ecosystem functioning is complex and dynamic. Multiple indicators provide insights into land health. Analyze soil organic carbon, erosion patterns, tree cover, and ecosystem interactions for comprehensive understanding.
🌍 Soil Health • 🌳 Tree Cover • 🔄 Ecosystem Dynamics

Welcome to the climate module!

Explore climate events and trends

This module visualizes critical climate variables across the Great Green Wall corridor.
Location Filter
Temperature (°C) (ERA5, 1940–2025)
About temperature

Mean annual 2m air temperature from ERA5 reanalysis (1940–2025). The map shows long-term average temperatures and warming trends across the GGW corridor.

Use the Location Filter above to zoom to a region, or click on the map to show trends for a certain location.
About precipitation

Mean annual total precipitation from CHIRPS (1981–2025). CHIRPS blends satellite imagery with ground station data to produce high-resolution rainfall estimates.

Use the Location Filter above to zoom to a region, or click on the map to show trends for a certain location.

Average annual precipitation
200500800110014001700200025003000
mm / year
Precipitation (mm) (CHIRPS, 1981–2025)
Maximum Daily Rainfall Intensity Trend (GPM, 2001–2025)
About rainfall intensity

Trend in maximum daily rainfall intensity from GPM IMERG (2001–2025), expressed in mm per decade. Positive values indicate increasing extreme rainfall events.

Intensifying rainfall extremes increase flood and erosion risk across the Sahel, threatening restoration efforts along the corridor.

Rainfall intensity trend
-20-10-5051020
mm / day
Live Weather Map (Windy)
Click on the map to see a forecast for that location.
Tracking vegetation cover trends is essential for understanding ecosystem health and land use changes. When looking at long-term changes in vegetation cover, we use a satellite-derived vegetation index, such as the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). The EVI is a greenness index where higher EVI values indicate more green, healthy vegetation, while lower values indicate less vegetation or unhealthy plants. Decreasing EVI trends can indicate deforestation, land use change or increased droughts, while general increases can indicate effective landscape-level restoration, increased water supply or changes in land management.

EVI time series are essential for monitoring the effectiveness of land restoration efforts and improved management practices. Changes in vegetation trends provide evidence of:

  • Restoration Success: Positive trends indicating vegetation recovery following intervention
  • Land Degradation: Negative trends revealing areas requiring attention
  • Management Impacts: Assessment of conservation and sustainable land management outcomes

This monitoring supports evidence-based decision-making for land managers, policymakers, and conservation practitioners.

Click to expand filters

Multi-temporal Vegetation Trend Analysis
EVI Trend Attribution: Rainfall vs Management

Each point is a district. X-axis = overall EVI trend; Y-axis = trend after removing rainfall contribution (management signal). Districts in the top half are greening beyond what rainfall alone explains.

Click any bubble to zoom the map into that country and district and load its EVI trend.

Enhanced Vegetation Index

The Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) is a satellite-derived metric that measures vegetation greenness and health.

MODIS EVI sample

Vegetation Time Series

Our analysis creates comprehensive time series of vegetation dynamics from 2000 to present, capturing seasonal patterns and long-term trends.

EVI time series example

Select a country and administrative region to explore soil and land health information for that area.
Mali
Niger
Ethiopia
Senegal
Ghana
Land Health Indicators Map
Show layers:

Drylands

Drylands cover 60% of Africa and are characterized by water scarcity.

Rangelands

Rangelands support pastoralism, central to millions of livelihoods.

Agroforestry

Trees on farms provide food, feed and energy for millions of households.

Land Health

Land health refers to the capacity of land to sustain ecosystem functions.
Fire Frequency 2001–2024
About Fire Frequency

Fire frequency counts how many times each 500 m pixel burned between 2001 and 2024, derived from MODIS active fire detections. High-frequency fire areas indicate chronic burning that can suppress woody vegetation regeneration and accelerate soil carbon loss.

In the Sahel, seasonal burning is a widespread pastoral practice used to clear dry grass for livestock. Understanding where fires recur frequently helps identify areas where restoration efforts may face persistent pressure from repeated disturbance.

The Regreening App

Empowering local communities to track, monitor, and scale land restoration across the Great Green Wall. Community-driven science meeting state-of-the-art technology.

Community-Driven Monitoring

The Regreening App is an Android-based mobile application designed to overcome the challenge of lacking reliable, location-specific data on the effectiveness of land restoration practices. Developed in consultation with implementing partners, agricultural extension agents, and farmers, the app facilitates the collection of robust quantitative and qualitative data. By blending citizen science with real-time analytics, it allows communities to take ownership of monitoring while providing critical insights to policymakers and project managers.

Why Citizen Science?

  • Scalability: Engage thousands of local actors to monitor vast operational areas.
  • Real-time Insights: Direct feedback loops combining ground-truth data with satellite Earth Observation.
  • Community Ownership: Fostering stewardship and pride in local restoration outcomes.

App Modules

Tree Planting

Record new plantings, species details, survival rates, and management practices. Track growth with georeferenced photo evidence.

FMNR

Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration. Document the protection and management of existing root stocks, measuring density and species diversity.

Nurseries

Track seedling production, species diversity, and distribution. Support local enterprise and ensure quality planting material supply.

Rangeland Restoration

Monitor restoration of grazing lands. Track soil health and vegetation recovery in critical pastoral ecosystems.

Join the Regreening Movement

Are you working on land restoration in the Sahel? Integrate the Regreening App into your project's M&E framework.



GGW Restoration Dashboard

About this dashboard

A science-based monitoring platform tracking climate, vegetation, and land health across the Great Green Wall corridor — from Senegal to Djibouti.

Background

The Great Green Wall Initiative

The idea of a 'Great Green Wall' or 'Green Front' to stop the southward expansion of the Sahara Desert has been around since the 1950s. In the 1970s, the vision was to create a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across the entire width of Africa, from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east.

Today, the GGW initiative aims to combat land degradation and desertification, improve food security, and enhance livelihoods for millions of people living in the region. It has evolved beyond a green wall to a more holistic approach that includes ecosystem restoration and sustainable land management across the Sahel region and beyond.

Spanning 11 countries — Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti — the initiative targets 100 million hectares of degraded land for restoration by 2030, in alignment with SDG 15 (Life on Land) and the UNCCD Land Degradation Neutrality framework.

🌍
11
countries
🌱
100M
hectares by 2030
🌐
8,000 km
corridor length
GGW landscapeSenegal villageEthiopia restoration
Purpose

About This Dashboard

This dashboard provides an integrated view of environmental change across the Great Green Wall corridor using the latest remote sensing and machine learning approaches, combined with comprehensive data collected across the region.

It is built for researchers, policymakers, land managers, and restoration practitioners who need evidence-based insights to support decision-making, monitor progress toward restoration goals, and communicate results to stakeholders.

🛰️
Remote Sensing
MODIS, ERA5, CHIRPS, GPM, Sentinel-2
🤖
Machine Learning
Restrend, trend attribution, land degradation detection
📱
Citizen Science
Ground-truth field data from the Regreening App
Explore

Dashboard Modules

The dashboard is organized into five thematic modules. Use the left-hand navigation to switch between them.

Dashboard overview

Overview & KPIs

The Home module provides a GGW-wide synthesis with dynamic KPI cards, a regional vegetation slope chart, and an interactive temperature trend graph.

  • 7 real-time KPI cards (temperature, precipitation, EVI, fire, SOC, erosion, tree cover)
  • Country-level vegetation slope comparison (2001–2014 vs 2015–2024)
  • Warming trend chart with 10-year rolling average
  • SDG 15.3.1 Land Degradation Neutrality alignment banner
Climate analysis

Climate Analysis

Explore long-term climate trends and live weather patterns across the GGW corridor using ERA5 reanalysis, CHIRPS precipitation, and GPM rainfall intensity data.

  • Interactive temperature and precipitation maps (1940–2025)
  • Click-to-extract local climate time series with anomaly stripes
  • Maximum daily rainfall intensity trend layer (GPM)
  • Synchronized pan-and-zoom across all three climate maps
  • Live weather overlay via Windy.com
Vegetation EVI time series

Vegetation Dynamics

Track long-term vegetation cover trends (2001–2024) using MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), with climate-attribution analysis to separate rainfall-driven from management-driven greening.

  • EVI trend map with Restrend attribution (management vs rainfall signal)
  • Click-to-extract district EVI time series with linear trend
  • Country-comparison scatter plot with quadrant interpretation labels
  • EVI trend comparison across two periods (2001–2014 and 2015–2024)
  • Sentinel-2 true-colour satellite image layer
Land health indicators

Land Health

Analyze soil health, erosion risk, and tree cover across the corridor using cloud-optimized geotiff (COG) layers, with district-level violin distributions and country-level bubble charts.

  • Soil Organic Carbon, Soil Erosion, and Tree Cover map layers
  • Click-to-extract point values overlaid on district distributions
  • Violin plots with boxplots showing indicator distributions by district
  • Country-level bubble chart for cross-national comparison
  • Fire frequency and trend map (MODIS MCD64A1, 2001–2024)
Citizen science field work

Citizen Science

Explore community-driven ground-truth data collected via the Regreening App, an Android application used by field teams and farmers across the GGW to monitor land restoration in near-real time.

  • Tree planting records with species, survival rates, and georeferencing
  • Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) monitoring
  • Nursery seedling production and distribution tracking
  • Rangeland restoration and soil health assessments
  • Photo evidence and field observation gallery
User Guide

How to Use This Dashboard

1
Navigate with the sidebar

Use the left-hand navigation panel to switch between modules. Collapse or expand the sidebar using the ☰ icon in the top-left. On mobile, the sidebar slides in as an overlay.

2
Filter by country or region

Each module has a Location Filter where you can select a GGW country and administrative district. The maps, charts, and KPIs update automatically to show data for that area.

3
Click on maps to extract local data

In the Climate, Vegetation, and Land Health modules, clicking directly on the map extracts time series or indicator values for that exact location and overlays them on the charts — no need to select a region first.

4
Expand charts to full screen

Most chart and map cards have a ⛶ full-screen button in the top-right corner. Click it to expand any visualization for a closer look, then press Escape or click outside to return.

5
Switch between English and French

Use the EN / FR toggle button in the top-right navigation bar to switch the dashboard language. The URL updates automatically so you can share a direct link to the French version.

Data

Data Sources

🌡️
Temperature — ERA5 Reanalysis

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA5 hourly reanalysis at 0.25° grid resolution, 1940–2025. Monthly means aggregated to district level across the GGW belt. Copernicus CDS

🌧️
Precipitation — CHIRPS

Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS), blending satellite imagery with ground stations at 0.05° resolution, 1981–2025. Produced by the UCSB Climate Hazards Center.

⛈️
Rainfall Intensity — GPM IMERG

NASA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) IMERG Final Run at 0.1° resolution. Maximum daily rainfall intensity trend 2001–2025. Extreme events increase flood and erosion risk across the Sahel.

🌿
Vegetation — MODIS EVI (MOD13Q1)

Enhanced Vegetation Index from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) at 250 m resolution, 2001–2024. Restrend attribution based on Evans & Geerken (2004) to separate climate vs. management signals.

🪱
Soil Organic Carbon, Erosion & Tree Cover

SoilGrids (ISRIC) for soil organic carbon. Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) derived erosion risk. Global tree cover from Hansen et al. / Global Forest Watch. Delivered as Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs).

🔥
Fire Frequency — MODIS MCD64A1

MODIS Burned Area product (MCD64A1) at 500 m resolution mapping spatial distribution and frequency of fires, 2001–2024. High-frequency areas indicate chronic burning that can suppress woody regeneration.

📱
Citizen Science — Regreening App

Ground-truth field observations collected by farmers, extension agents, and restoration practitioners using the Regreening App (Android). Includes tree planting, FMNR, nursery, and rangeland restoration records.
Partners

Built by

This dashboard is developed by CIFOR-ICRAF as part of the Knowledge for the Great Green Wall (K4GGW) initiative, with funding from the European Union.

The K4GGW initiative synthesizes cutting-edge science to support the GGW programme with evidence-based knowledge on ecosystem restoration outcomes, climate adaptation, and sustainable land management.