Where the *** did the savanna go?

One objective of the my past trip to Burkina Faso was to validate some of our maps, and more particularly the land cover map.

So we decided to go North of Bama and to turn right into the dust road to Padema, there were the savanna should be.

the road to Padema

And this is what we found in the savanna :

crops between mango trees

A papaya tree plantation

up coming mango tree plantation

horticulture

animal feeding on crop residues in the fields

So basically everything but savanna. It has a bit more tree than what is classified as cropland, but everything is somehow used for crop, with the exception of what is classified as savanna with trees, which we could find and is still the original natural vegetation

original vegetation

Some natural vegetation

Conclusion, we will have to think hard on how we want to define grazing and cropping area in our environmental model!