Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change in the Sahel: An Approach to Conducting Phenological Screening

Phenological screening involves evaluating the responses of crops to evolving trends in intra-seasonal weather patterns. This approach contrasts with the more common assessment of impacts resulting from inter-annual rainfall variations. Current understanding of climate change supports the argument that a shift in orientation to focus on the intra-seasonal occurrence of extreme weather events is critical. The proposed approach produces results that describe the proximity of adaptive limits. This approach is particularly useful in environments such as the Sahel, where climate extremes are the norm and most crops are believed to be near their adaptive limits. The assessment of impacts of intra-seasonal trends is only now beginning to be explored, representing an area with the greatest potential for new contribution from further analytic work. The implementation of the approach described in this paper depends upon the availability of a significant amount of site-specific data across several domains, such as soil characteristics, crop varieties, and current and projected climate. Time and resource constraints prohibited the African and Latin American Resilience to Climate Change (ARCC) project from executing this Sahel-wide screening approach. The document presents an approach to conducting phenological screening, which involves several steps. The first step is to identify the study zone and crops to be evaluated. The second step is to determine crop profiles, including characteristics such as growth stages, flowering dates, and maturity dates. The third step is to define climate parameters, including temperature and precipitation patterns. The fourth step is to characterize climate trends, including changes in temperature and precipitation patterns over time. The fifth step is to conduct the screening, which involves analyzing the impact of climate trends on crop productivity. The sixth step is to use phenological screening analysis to evaluate the responses of crops to evolving trends in intra-seasonal weather patterns. The document also presents a table of contents, which includes acronyms and abbreviations, an executive summary, and references. The acronyms and abbreviations section defines terms such as ARCC, CC, CIAT, CILSS, CMIP5, FAO, GIEWS, GCM, IPCC, NCDC, SRCVO, SREX, and USAID. The executive summary provides an overview of the document, which presents an approach to conducting phenological screening to evaluate the responses of crops to evolving trends in intra-seasonal weather patterns. The document argues that a shift in orientation to focus on the intra-seasonal occurrence of extreme weather events is critical, and that continued analysis based upon inter-annual precipitation averages will increasingly miss the realities of the intra-season distributional effects with which farmers must contend. The document also presents a series of studies on climate change vulnerability and adaptation in West Africa, which includes the Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change in the Sahel series. The series includes documents such as An Approach to Evaluating the Performance of Agricultural Practices, Profiles of Agricultural Management Practices, A Review of 15 Crops Cultivated in the Sahel, Expected Impacts on Pests and Diseases Afflicting Selected Crops, and Expected Impacts on Pests and Diseases Afflicting Livestock. The document concludes by arguing that the approach presented in this paper is particularly useful in environments such as the Sahel, where climate extremes are the norm and most crops are believed to be near their adaptive limits. The assessment of impacts of intra-seasonal trends is only now beginning to be explored, representing an area with the greatest potential for new contribution from further analytic work.