An unexpectedly large count of trees in the West African Sahara and Sahel

Abstract

A large proportion of dryland trees and shrubs (hereafter referred to collectively as trees) grow in isolation, without canopy closure. These non-forest trees have a crucial role in biodiversity, and provide ecosystem services such as carbon storage, food resources and shelter for humans and animals 1,2 . However, most public interest relating to trees is devoted to forests, and trees outside of forests are not well-documented 3 . Here we map the crown size of each tree more than 3 m 2 in size over a land area that spans 1.3 million km 2 in the West African Sahara, Sahel and sub-humid zone, using submetre-resolution satellite imagery and deep learning 4 . We detected over 1.8 billion individual trees (13.4 trees per hectare), with a median crown size of 12 m 2 , along a rainfall gradient from 0 to 1,000 mm per year. The canopy cover increases from 0.1% (0.7 trees per hectare) in hyper-arid areas, through 1.6% (9.9 trees per hectare) in arid and 5.6% (30.1 trees per hectare) in semi-arid zones, to 13.3% (47 trees per hectare) in sub-humid areas. Although the overall canopy cover is low, the relatively high density of isolated trees challenges prevailing narratives about dryland desertification 5-7 , and even the desert shows a surprisingly high tree density. Our assessment suggests a way to monitor trees outside of forests globally, and to explore their role in mitigating degradation, climate change and poverty.