Spatiotemporal land use changes dynamics impacts on natural reserves in West African dryland: Drivers, carbon emissions and climate change implications Issaka Abdou Razakou Kiribou a,* , Kangbéni Dimobe b, Charles Lamoussa Sanou c, Sintayehu W. Dejene d,e a Africa Center of Excellence for Climate Smart Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation (ACE Climate-SABC), Haramaya University, P.O.Box 138, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia b Départment des Eaux, Forêts et Environnement, Insititut des Sciences de l’Environnement et du Développement Rural (ISEDR), Université Daniel Ouezzin Coulibaly, BP 176, Dédougou, Burkina Faso c West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), Competence Center, Boulevard Mouammar Kadafi, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso d International Center for Tropical Agriculture, P.O. Box 5689, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia e Institute of Geographysics, Space Science and Astronomy, Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 1176, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Carbon emissions Climate change Land use change Drylands Protected areas West africa A B S T R A C T Land use change (LUC), primarily driven by anthropogenic pressure, poses a major threat to West African drylands’ vegetation. As critical indicators of ecosystem sustainability, LUC patterns reflect how human activities alter carbon dynamics and climate vulnerability. This systematic review analyzes the spatial and temporal dy namics of LUC impacts on natural reserves. Using targeted keywords, 18 peer-reviewed articles and institutional reports were synthesized to assess LUC patterns, identify key biophysical and socio-economic drivers, and evaluate carbon and climate implications. Findings show substantial losses of natural ecosystems due to land conversion, deforestation, and soil degradation. Between 1975 and 2013, Sahelian savanna, woodland, and gallery forest declined by 23 %, 40.79 % and 23.92 %, respectively, while agricultural land, settlements, and sandy areas (Bare Soil) expanded by 91.8 %, 115 % and 49.9 %. From 2000 to 2022, 6.64 % of protected areas were converted, with the highest rates in the Gambia and Mauritania. Burkina Faso and Senegal emerged as carbon emission hotspots. These ecological shifts disrupt the regional carbon cycle and heighten climate vulnerability. Despite the pivotal role of drylands in carbon cycling, major gaps remain in monitoring and modeling LUC-related emissions. Addressing these requires improved spatial indicators, region-specific emission factors, and policy-oriented land management frameworks. Strengthening the science-policy interface is vital to ensure these indicators effectively guide sustainable land governance and climate adaptation strategies in West African drylands. 1. Introduction Shrublands and savannas that compose West Africa’s dryland eco systems are undergoing significant changes due to evolving land use patterns (Li et al., 2024). Land Use Change (LUC) in the region is driven by multiple forces, including human population growth, agricultural land expansion, urbanization, and natural resource extraction and uti lization (Herrmann et al., 2020; Kiribou et al., 2024a,b). According to the United Nations (2025), West Africa’s population grew at an annual rate of 2.6 % between 2020 and 2024, increasing from 402 million to 456.5 million, with projections reaching 628.5 million by 2040 (UNFPA, 2014; United Nations, 2025). The region accounts for 5.59 % of the global population and 30 % of Africa’s total population (UNFPA, 2014; United Nations, 2025). Population density is expected to rise from 68.7 inhabitants/km2 in 2020 to 103.7 inhabitants/km2 by 2040 (United Nations, 2025; United NationsDepartment of Economic and Social * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: krazakou200248@gmail.com, kiribou.i@edu.wascal.org (I.A.R. Kiribou), kangbenidimobe@gmail.com (K. Dimobe), sclamoussa@gmail.com (C.L. Sanou), sintekal@gmail.com (S.W. Dejene). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental and Sustainability Indicators journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com/journal/environmental-and-sustainability-indicators https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2025.101004 Received 21 June 2025; Received in revised form 29 September 2025; Accepted 26 October 2025 Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 28 (2025) 101004 Available online 28 October 2025 2665-9727/© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc/4.0/ ). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3410-6204 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3410-6204 mailto:krazakou200248@gmail.com mailto:kiribou.i@edu.wascal.org mailto:kangbenidimobe@gmail.com mailto:sclamoussa@gmail.com mailto:sintekal@gmail.com www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/26659727 https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/environmental-and-sustainability-indicators https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2025.101004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2025.101004 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.indic.2025.101004&domain=pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Affairs& Population Division, 2018). This rapid growth exerts intense pressure on land resources needed to support livelihoods, resulting in the widespread conversion of natural landscapes and environmental disruption, particularly deforestation (Tong and Qiu, 2020) These dynamics highlight major environmental challenges, particu larly the expansion of agricultural land, which is the dominant LUC in the region. Such changes have profound implications for regional carbon dynamics and climate regulation (Dong et al., 2025). The conversion of natural vegetation to agricultural lands and settlements, compounded by unsustainable land management, results in substantial carbon diox ide emissions (IPBES, 2019; IPCC et al., 2019). Between 2010 and 2019 Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector contributed 57 % of Africa’s carbon emissions, with West Africa accounting for a significant share (Nabuurs et al., 2022). According to ECOWAS (2022), the region contributes 23 % of Africa’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (ECOWAS, 2022). Drylands, which cover more than 70 % of West Africa’s landscape, are responsible for two-thirds of these emis sions (UNCCD, 2009). Although drylands are generally considered to have a very low car bon potential zone, recent growing evidence indicates that they contribute substantially to carbon sequestration, which makes them an extensive part of the global carbon cycle (Huang et al., 2017). Thus, West African drylands, through their natural reserves covering 412,800 km2 (9.6 % of the area), constitute a great potential landscape for carbon sequestration due to their unique ecosystems. Moreover, this ecosystem reveals high sensitivity to LUC dynamics, including climate variability, that affects vegetation productivity and biomass composition (Huang et al., 2024; Kiribou et al., 2025). While much research pays more attention to the LUC impacts on vegetated regions where forestry carbon sequestration potential is well established in West Africa, drylands’ LUC-induced carbon emissions accountability assessment remains limited despite its ecological importance in vegetation structure (Prevedello et al., 2018; Turner et al., 2022). The LUC-related carbon emission spatially and temporally crosses the West African dryland re gion’s landscape still not well understood. Despite their ecological significance, the impacts of LUC on protected areas within West African drylands remain understudied, especially in terms of carbon fluxes and climate change implications (Kiribou et al., 2025a). These ecosystems play a critical role in conservation but are increasingly threatened by socio-economic and climatic pressures that accelerate LUC and carbon emissions (Cure et al., 2023). A systematic review of existing evidence on LUC-related carbon emissions in West African drylands is therefore needed to inform sustainable land use planning and strengthen vegetation resilience to climate change. Such a review is crucial for advancing carbon neutrality strategies in the sub region through policy frameworks that enhance dryland resilience to rapid environmental change and anthropogenic pressure. Accordingly, this study aims to provide a comprehensive systematic review of LULC-induced carbon emissions in West African drylands. Specifically, it assesses the spatial and temporal dynamics of land use change, identifies the main drivers, and evaluates their implications for sustainable land management and climate change mitigation. The re view is deliberately scoped to the drylands rather than the entire West African region, to address key knowledge gaps specific to these vulnerable ecosystems. 2. Conceptual framework and literature review Land use-induced carbon emissions comprehension, including the scientific basis of climatic system connections and implications, is crucial for regional carbon neutrality targets. According to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC), land use-related carbon emissions refer to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released, as well as other greenhouse gases (GHGs), due to anthropogenic land conversion (UNFCC, 2025). It mainly includes methane (CH4) and Nitrous oxide (N2O), which are released in the atmosphere due to deforestation, cropland expansion, and human settlement (urbanization), and highly contribute to global warming (IPCC et al., 2019; Turner et al., 2022). The mechanism of LUC carbon emission involves the process in which the carbon stored is released through various anthropogenic activities, such as land clearing, deforestation, forest degradation, soil carbon loss from agriculture, burning of biomass, and urban expansion for population settlement (Nabuurs et al., 2022). The significant contribution of LUC to carbon emissions enhances atmospheric GHG concentration in arid and semi-arid regions, which impacts ecosystem services and biodiversity (IPCC et al., 2019; Turner et al., 2022). Historically, LUC has signifi cantly amplified carbon emissions globally, with sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America being the most significant regions contributing to net carbon emissions (Baccini et al., 2012; Qin et al., 2024). This emission contributes to climate change, which requires that LUC be well scrutinized from a climate and conservation actions perspective at the regional, national, and local levels (Dagnachew et al., 2021; Qin et al., 2024). This is important for achieving not only the Paris agreement goal, but also many of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), since there is a dynamic feedback loop between climate and carbon cycle (Dagnachew et al., 2021), with both negative and positive feedback. Moreover, the carbon emission to which LUC contributes creates a dynamic feedback loop with the climate, which constitutes a dual interaction, where changes in one reinforce changes in the other, leading to negative and positive feedback. The positive feedback is when the temperatures rise, accelerating forest fires, soil respiration, with a release of more carbon (IPCC et al., 2021; Ripple et al., 2023). The negative feedback in the climate system loop is where human activities contribute to increasing carbon emissions, which may stimulate vege tation growth in terms of CO2 fertilization and therefore, enhance car bon uptake that is often not entirely consistent and can be affected by various factors, like climate change itself and other environmental fac tors (Andrews et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2017). The relevance of this process to land use is that LUC alters local microclimates and land sur face properties such as albedo, land surface temperature, and evapo transpiration, which change and influence the capacity for carbon storage and sensitivity of ecosystems to climate variability, such as droughts in drylands (Zhao et al., 2021). This implies that climate modelling and projection, such as CMIP5/CMIP6, which play a key role in understanding future climate impacts, particularly in vulnerable re gions like drylands, have to well incorporate LUC dynamics (Koutroulis, 2019; Zhao et al., 2021). Thus, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) that simulates past, present, and future climate under various greenhouse gas emissions scenarios plays a crucial role in identifying vulnerable regions like drylands in West Africa. These areas are particularly sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation (Durack et al., 2025), where even minor shifts in climatic conditions can exacerbate water scarcity, reduce vegetation cover, accelerate land degradation, and ultimately threaten local livelihoods (Stringer et al., 2021). For the couple of climate-LUC intervention strategies to support sustainable land management, Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) can be a potential support in sustainable land management (Kiribou et al., 2024; Schipper et al., 2022). For instance, climate projection scenarios can be downscaled and integrated into spatial and temporal analyses to investigate how the future climate may affect carbon emissions, vege tation dynamics, and land use trajectories, and vice versa, in dryland regions (IPCC et al., 2019; Obahoundje and Diedhiou, 2022). Since drylands host more than 40 % of the world population, characterized by scattered vegetation, they are highly sensitive to LUC impact (Liu et al., 2024). LUC-induced carbon emissions impact assessment in this vulnerable ecosystem allows exploring climate-carbon feedbacks, including the interaction between climate variability and LUC, for effective ecosystem resilience (Huang et al., 2017; Osborne et al., 2022). Thus, understanding of the interplay of LUC-induced carbon emissions I.A.R. Kiribou et al. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 28 (2025) 101004 2 and climate change effects in the West African dryland region is crucial for sustainable land management and limiting anthropogenic pressure on natural reserves (Barati et al., 2023). This is particularly important for ecosystem health and biodiversity preservation that support millions of people across this West African semi-arid region. 3. Method 3.1. Study area This review focuses specifically on the West African drylands, which correspond mainly to the Sahel, a semi-arid zone that forms a transi tional belt between the Sahara Desert in the north and the more humid savanna and tropical forests to the south, an extensive ecological tran sition that stretches across the region (OSS, 2019). It lies between the arid Sahara in the north and the humid Sudanian and Guinean zones in the south. The area spans from East to West to the parts of Sudan and covers countries such as Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, northern Nigeria, Gambia, Cape Verde, Mauritania, and Western Sahara. It covers approximately 4.3 million Km2, located between 10◦N and 30◦N lati tude, and 30◦W to 20◦E longitude (EROS, 2023; see Fig. 1). The region is characterized by five major climatic zones: desert climate in the north, pure tropical climate, semi-arid desert climate, semi-arid tropical climate, and transitional tropical climate. The vegetation of the West African drylands is mostly characterized by a mixture of savanna grasslands, scattered trees, and seasonal rain fall, making it a critical area for both ecological balance and human livelihoods (Forkuor et al., 2020). The semi-arid is the dominant climate condition of the study area, under the influence of the Sahara Desert and characterized by high temperatures and limited rainfall, with annual precipitation ranging between 300 and 800 mm (3–5 months) (Ferner et al., 2018a). Vegetation ranges from shrubs, savanna, grassland, and gallery forest alongside the main rivers (Karen Hahn et al., 2010). The area is dominated by sandy soil, poor in nutrients, and vulnerable to land degradation and desertification (IPCC et al., 2019; Mesele et al., 2025). Agriculture and livestock husbandry dominate human activities across the region. These consisted of subsistence crop production sys tems and pastoralism, with crops and animal species mainly dominated by millet, sorghum, cows, cattle, sheep, and goats (De Haan et al., 2015). The agriculture is mainly rain-fed, highly vulnerable to drought and climate variability. Desertification, soil erosion, and climate-induced droughts are recurrent in the region, coupled with overgrazing, defor estation, and land conversion, which intensify the ecological fragility (Huang et al., 2020; IPCC et al., 2019). Moreover, the region has a sig nificant natural reserve known as protected areas, covering about 9.6 % of the land (OSS, 2019). In this region, climatic conditions are projected to worsen water insecurity and availability for agricultural productivity (Stringer et al., 2021). Thus, food insecurity will continuously be exac erbated by climate extreme events, definitely affecting population resilience efforts and contributing to biodiversity loss (Koutroulis, 2019; Mirzabaev et al., 2022). 3.2. Method and data This systematic review aimed to comprehensively assess carbon emissions induced by LUC in West African dryland ecosystems. Scientific articles were retrieved from Scopus and Google Scholar to ensure broad, cross-disciplinary coverage. Boolean operators (“AND”, “OR”) were applied to combinations of keywords such as “Land Use Change”, "Carbon emissions", "Natural Reserve OR Protected areas", "West Africa", "Dryland Ecosystem", and "Climate Change". These keywords were selected to maximize search sensitivity and ensure comprehensive coverage of the research question. In addition to peer-reviewed publications, relevant institutional re ports were included to illustrate the significance of LUC impacts. The review covered the period 2000 to 2024 to allow robust trend analysis Fig. 1. Location of the study area: (a) Africa with inset of World; (b) West Africa with inset of Africa showing the two sub-regions, (c) map of West African drylands showing climatic zone, the main rivers, countries, and natural reserves. I.A.R. Kiribou et al. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 28 (2025) 101004 3 and identification of knowledge gaps. Clear inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to ensure only directly relevant studies were considered (Table 1). Spatial datasets were also used to complement the review. Country shapefiles were obtained from the IGISMAP open-source platform (http s://www.igismap.com/download-free-shapefile-maps/, accessed on May 18, 2025). Data on natural reserves were respectively retrieved from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA,https://www.prot ectedplanet.net/en/thematic-areas/wdpa?tab=WDPA), and climatic zones from the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Ef ficiency (ECREEE) database (ECREEE, 2017) accessed on 22 May 2025 and 1 June 2025, respectively. In addition, the Food and Agriculture Organization Statistics (FAOSTAT, https://www.fao. org/faostat/en/#data/GF) was used to obtain West African dryland countries’ net carbon emissions and removals from forests, accessed on 12 June 2025. Additionally, an institutional report from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, reports on the West African land use change report (EROS, 2023) is considered to have retrieved the West African drylands LUC spatial dynamics. All retrieved data were analyzed using R 4.2.1 (R Core Team, 2023) for statistical analysis, QGIS 3.20 (QGIS Development Team, 2021) for geospatial analysis, and Mendeley Cite v1.67.0 for reference management. Thus, the search approach using keywords has resulted in system atically retrieving, evaluating, and synthesizing scientific peer-reviewed articles from Google Scholar and Scopus databases. This method is recommended in a systematic review because of its transparent and comprehensive approach that strategically identifies research gaps, evaluates, and synthesizes knowledge from all existing relevant aca demic papers related to the topic (Snyder, 2019). Thus, by applying inclusion and exclusion criteria by screening all retrieved papers, we finally gathered 18 articles considered in the analysis (Fig. 2). 4. Results 4.1. Land use change dynamics in West African Drylands: drivers and their impact on protected areas The West African dryland is dominated by savanna, steppe (semi- arid grassland), and Sahelian grass savanna. This revealed that the re gion is largely covered by sparse vegetation, shrublands, alongside wetlands that constitute the biodiversity hotspots (Barnieh et al., 2020). From 1975 to 2013, the West African dryland LUC dynamics, adapted from the West Africa land use and land cover time series (Cotillon, 2017) reveal an expansion of agricultural lands, settlements, and bare soil, rocky and sandy lands, with a significant decrease in Sahelian grass savanna, savanna, and steppe (Fig. 3). This rapid increase in agricultural lands and settlement area is driven by the complex interplay of popu lation growth, urbanization, and land conversion (Wu et al., 2024). The increasing need for food and natural resources, along with the rapid human population growth, leads to land conversion from natural habi tats to agricultural lands, urbanization, and other land use types. This occurs at the expense of the woody savanna, Sahelian savanna, steppe, and woodlands, which have decreased drastically over the last two de cades. The primary driving force of this land use dynamics is the rapid population increase, with the associated increase in anthropogenic pressure on the natural resources. Urbanization and settlement domi nate the land use category, which has doubled from 493,000 km2 to 1, 121,000 km2 between 1975 and 2013, respectively, in the whole West African land use intensity (Herrmann et al., 2020). The West African dryland region highly vulnerable and sensitive to environmental changes, faces significant climate change impacts that influence LUC. Climate change has emerged as one of the main drivers of LUC dynamics (Huang et al., 2017; Kiribou et al., 2025). Through increased climate stressors such as temperature, rainfall variability, and extreme drought, it exacerbates land degradation and biodiversity loss, while diminishing various ecosystem services (Stringer et al., 2021). Consequently, these drivers make LUC to become a major driver of habitat degradation, with substantial implications for biodiversity con servation within protected areas in the West African dryland. Many studies on LUC dynamics have documented anthropogenic pressure through population growth, and the associated over- exploitation of natural resources, including intensive logging and wood harvesting, livestock grazing, and rapid agricultural land expan sion, in transforming natural reserves that lead to deforestation, vege tation fragmentation, and habitat loss in the West African drylands (Dimobe et al., 2015; Scanes, 2018). From 1975 to 2013, the following land cover changes occurred: Sahelian savanna, savanna, steppe, woodland, and gallery forest have lost an amount of 88432 (− 23 %) sq Table 1 Literature search and selection criteria. Theme Inclusion criteria Exclusion criteria Land Use Change (LUC) Research focusing on Land use and land cover change in the West African dryland countries Studies conducted outside of the West African dryland region Carbon Emissions Studies examining the effects of LUC on Carbon emission (e.g., deforestation, degradation) Research that does not establish a connection between LUC to Carbon emissions. Biodiversity Studies have shown the impact of LUC on biodiversity, particularly within Protected areas/Natural reserves Studies without a clear link with LUC and Biodiversity Climate Change Studies highlighting LUC’s implications on climate change Studies that do not link LUC implications to climate change. Language and Time frame Scientific articles, quantitative studies, institutional reports, and original research published in English from 2000 to 2024. Scientific articles, quantitative studies, and original research published in other Languages, and grey literature published before 2000, Fig. 2. Flow chart of the data retrieval approach. I.A.R. Kiribou et al. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 28 (2025) 101004 4 https://www.igismap.com/download-free-shapefile-maps/ https://www.igismap.com/download-free-shapefile-maps/ https://www.protectedplanet.net/en/thematic-areas/wdpa?tab=WDPA https://www.protectedplanet.net/en/thematic-areas/wdpa?tab=WDPA https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/GF https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/GF km, 38040 (− 15.24 %), 46716 (− 6.99 %), 3188 (− 40.79 %), and 3288 (− 23.92 %) respectively, while agricultural land, increased by 129,132 km2 (91.8 %), settlements by 2044 km2 (115 %), and sandy areas by 46, 980 km2 (49.9 %) (Fig. 4). The high-level decreases in most vegetated areas revealed the significant impact of LUC on the natural reserve. In the meantime, afforestation and/or reforestation efforts show 88 sq km, which is still lower than the rate of land degradation (Gonzalez, 2001). Moreover, it has been revealed that climate variability shapes vegetation dynamics in many of the natural reserves in the West African drylands (Kiribou et al., 2025a). This evidence suggests that natural reserves are experiencing a progressive and worrying encroachment and degradation due to limited enforcement capacity and weak land use governance in this West African dryland region (Gonzalez, 2001). Moreover, forestry data analyzed from FAOSTAT confirmed that the natural reserve’s conver sion is the direct effect of LUC dynamics (FAOSTAT, 2025). Analysis of related data revealed an average forestry land conversion of 146100 ha from 2000 to 2022, with Burkina Faso and Senegal having the highest converted land (Fig. 5B), while Mali has the greatest forestry land (Fig. 5A). These pressures threaten the ecological functions of buffer zones that are critical for species such as migratory birds and primates, which require large and connected landscapes. This compromises the survival of both resident and migratory species, particularly those with specialized habitat needs (Czudek, 2001). Collectively, the literature highlights the effects of LUC on carbon emissions due to deforestation associated with protected area conversion (Table S1). It reveals the ur gent need for integrated LUC and conservation planning that extends beyond formal protected area boundaries to address the broader socio-ecological dynamics of land transformation. 4.2. LUC and carbon émissions implications LUC is a significant source of carbon emissions in West African drylands, even within formally protected areas, according to the liter ature. Converting natural vegetation, such as savannas, dry forests, and woodlands, into agricultural land, uncontrolled grazing areas, and set tlements results in substantial carbon losses due to forestry land con version. Thus, the results of the FAOSTAT data analysis have once again confirmed the influence of LUC on carbon emissions in the drylands of West Africa, with the conversion of forest land remaining the main driver (FAOSTAT, 2025). It revealed an average forestry land conversion rate of 6.64 %, with Gambia and Mauritania having the highest con version rates and Mali and Senegal the lowest (Fig. 5D), while Burkina Faso and Senegal have the highest rate of carbon emission (Fig. 5C). Capo-Verde reports no conversion and no emissions, possibly due to its very limited forest area. Burkina Faso is the largest emitter of carbon, which is likely due to anthropogenic pressure and unsustainable land management practices, and is therefore correlated with its high forest conversion. However, the vulnerable countries regarding the forest land Fig. 3. West African land cover change dynamics. Data Source: (EROS, 2023) Fig. 4. Change in Lan Cover dynamics between 2000 and 2024. I.A.R. Kiribou et al. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 28 (2025) 101004 5 conversion rate are Gambia and Mauritania, while Niger and Burkina Faso are moderately vulnerable (Fig. 5D). Furthermore, a study indicates that aboveground woody carbon (AGC) declined by 56–90 % in shrub savanna and up to 95 % in woodland savanna along intensified agricultural activities, including high wildlife-density pathways within the West African savanna due to natural and anthropogenic disturbance (Kindermann et al., 2025). Anthropogenic LUC, including wildfires, significantly impacts green house gas emissions in West African grass and shrub savannas. It in dicates that prescribed burns in these regions result in substantial carbon emissions, with grass savannas emitting 1.61 ± 0.13 t C ha− 1 and shrub savannas emitting 1.01 ± 0.13 t C ha− 1, primarily due to lower moisture levels and continuous biomass fueling intense fires (Yaro et al., 2024). Thus, LUC dynamics in West African drylands from 1975 to 2013 indi cate that a significant amount of carbon could be emitted from the degradation of savanna, woodland, and gallery forests. However, quantification of the carbon emissions related to these regional LUC dynamics remains limited. Nevertheless, a study of carbon losses from deforestation in African woodlands revealed substantial losses due to degradation and deforestation between 2007 and 2010. This affected 17 % of southern African woodlands, accounting for 55 % of biomass loss (approximately − 0.075 PgC/yr) (McNicol et al., 2018). Thus, these findings highlight that protected areas often experience weak enforcement, illegal logging, fuelwood collection, and encroach ment for subsistence farming, which are linked to carbon emissions (Masumbuko and Somda, 2014; Mcdonald et al., 2008; UNEP-WCMC, 2023). Even when areas are designated for conservation, socio-economic pressures and conflicts over land tenure frequently lead to de facto changes in land use, which have implications for direct carbon emissions from vegetation loss and soil degradation that contribute directly to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations (Quan and Dyer, 2008). These issues are exacerbated by climate variability and population growth in the West African Drylands context (Kiribou et al., 2025a). This reduction of the land carbon sequestration potential over time not only undermines global climate mitigation goals but also compromises the ecological resilience of West African drylands’ natural reserves that serve as habitat for species. Thus, addressing these chal lenges requires integrating carbon management into conservation stra tegies, including the use of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) frameworks, improved land tenure systems, and community-based natural resource management (Paudel et al., 2015). An approach that incorporates the surrounding land uses and socio-economic drivers is essential at the landscape scale to mitigate carbon emissions and enhance the long-term viability of natural reserve areas in West African drylands, as recommended by a study in social-ecological landscapes in the region (Atampugre et al., 2024). 4.3. Implications for climate change The ongoing land use transformation in West African drylands, particularly within and around natural reserves, has important Fig. 5. West African dryland countries’ forest conversion and related carbon emission: A) Country’s forestry total land, B) Forest land conversion, C) Carbon lost from land conversion, and D) proportion of forest land conversion, highlighting the country’s vulnerability in protected areas degradation (source. Data Source: (FAOSTAT, 2025) I.A.R. Kiribou et al. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 28 (2025) 101004 6 implications for climate change at both regional and global scales (Kiribou et al., 2025a). As dryland forests and savannas are converted to agricultural, grazing lands, and settlements, including degraded open areas, the carbon previously stored in aboveground biomass and soils is released into the atmosphere, contributing directly to rising CO2 levels (Dimobe et al., 2018). The net carbon emission and removal from forestry conversion revealed an average of 2000 kt of CO2 from 2000 to 2022 in the West African dryland (Fig. 6). Burkina Faso and Senegal are the highest carbon emission hotspots, while Mali has the highest po tential for carbon removals (Fig. 6). Further, the regional net carbon emission revealed a low emission hotspot from 2010 to 2015, while the carbon removals reduced signif icantly from 2011 to 2022. This contributes to reducing West African drylands’ terrestrial carbon sequestration potential, which leads to exacerbating the greenhouse effect, desertification, land degradation, and climate change (FAYE et al., 2019). The low potential for removing this carbon from the atmosphere impacts the regional climate directly. Furthermore, Dimobe et al. (2018), who have investigated carbon emissions in conjunction with climate change and LUC in the West Af rican savanna, found that climate change is projected to dramatically reduce carbon stocks by 2070. Under both the HadGEM2-ES and the MPI-ESM-MR climate scenarios, the carbon storage capacity is projected to decline by the century (Dimobe et al., 2018). Despite dryland eco systems storing less carbon per hectare than tropical rainforests, their vast spatial extent and increasing rate of land degradation make their cumulative impact significant and often overlooked in climate models, according to scientific literature (FAYE et al., 2019; Hanan et al., 2021). As an illustration, the dynamic interplay between climate change and land degradation contributes to the creation of an interactive feedback loop, where cumulative carbon emissions from LUC could substantially enhance future warming (Kaufhold et al., 2025). The loss of vegetative cover contributes to a feedback loop that ex acerbates local climate extremes. Vegetation loss can lead to reduced evapotranspiration and soil moisture retention, which in turn contribute to increased land surface temperatures, reduced rainfall, and exacerbate the region’s vulnerability to droughts (Abera et al., 2018). These bio physical changes can further accelerate desertification and reduce the resilience of both ecosystems and human communities to climate vari ability. The rapid increase of sandy land in the West African drylands (Fig. 4) revealed the alarming rate of desertification advancement, where natural reserves could play an important role in sustaining ecological integrity (IPCC et al., 2019; OSS, 2019). This therefore reveals a negative feedback loop in climate change and desertification due to the LUC dynamics. The recent findings from the IPCC report in West Africa’s drylands revealed that the region is experiencing unprecedented warming with rising temperatures by 1–3 ◦C since the 1970s, including increased frequency of heatwaves and droughts that lead to desertifi cation and land degradation, which threaten plant productivity (FAYE et al., 2019; IPCC et al., 2019; Nabuurs et al., 2022). This impact affects protected areas’ capacities to maintain ecological integrity due to the combined effects of unsustainable LUC and climate change, effectively rendering them unable to act as carbon sinks or climate change buffers. This undermines national commitments to international frameworks, such as the Paris Agreement, and complicates the implementation of nature-based climate solutions (NbS). This includes REDD + initiatives, which are aimed at conserving the carbon sequestration capacity of ecosystems (Başsüllü et al., 2023). Furthermore, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 in climate projection scenarios revealed that LUC has become one of the main factors involved in the climate dynamics (Phillips and Bonfils, 2015). This revealed that anthropogenic LUC activities play a critical role in Earth system dynamics through significant alterations to bio geophysical and biogeochemical properties at local to global scales (Ma et al., 2020). In the broader climate context, the degradation of dryland natural reserves calls into action the legal protection of land for effective climate mitigation. An increasing body of literature recognizes that protection status alone is insufficient without active management, enforcement, and integration with landscape-level LUC planning (Alliance Sahel, 2024; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2023). Therefore, preserving and restoring West African dryland ecosystems should be prioritized as part of a dual biodiversity and climate strategy that recognizes the interconnection of carbon storage, habitat conservation, and socio-economic resilience in the dryland re gion of West Africa. Fig. 6. Net Carbon emissions/removal from forest and protected areas. Data Source: (FAOSTAT, 2025) I.A.R. Kiribou et al. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 28 (2025) 101004 7 5. Limitations of the study and future research direction 5.1. West African dryland environmental sustainability challenges and future research direction Forest conservation projects mitigate climate change impacts by acting as carbon sinks, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and ensuring responsible resource extraction. West African drylands face growing sustainability challenges due to the combined anthropogenic pressure through LUC, leading to land degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate vulnerability. Thus, the effectiveness of conservation efforts is undermined by unsustainable LUC practices, weak governance, and limited enforcement of protected area regulations. The protected areas’ land conversion of more than 6.64 % in two decades due to LUC dy namics is an alarming indicator of ecological disruption and the reduc tion of ecosystem services. Moreover, the clustered analysis of LUC impact on protected area vegetation reveals a high correlation coeffi cient (0.96) between the regional net carbon emission and forest land conversion (Fig. 7). In this context, investigating LUC and conservation efforts to protect West African dryland ecosystems and biodiversity should be a regional priority. This is essential for achieving SDG 15, which focuses on the protection, restoration, and sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems. Therefore, effective natural reserves for a climate change mitigation strategy remain a regional challenge. Thus, an effective conservation approach should integrate socio-ecological dynamics beyond formal protected areas since forests offer essential ecosystem services, including soil stabilization, water regulation, and habitat for biodiversity. This review underscores the limited existing literature that links LUC, carbon emissions, and climate change implications in the West African dryland natural reserve. It therefore revealed that future research could priori tize the development of integrated spatial models, including long-term observation systems that capture the interdependent dynamics of LUC, carbon emissions, and climate responses in the West African dryland, as highlighted by Jessica et al. (2018) on the effects of climate and LUC assessment on West African drylands’ forage supply (Ferner et al., 2018b). Interdisciplinary approaches combining remote sensing, ground truthing, ecological modeling, and policy analysis are essential to sup port adaptive reserve management and region-specific climate mitiga tion strategies in West African drylands. These approaches could help to advance environmental sustainability in West African drylands, for example, by achieving SDG 15 targets 3, 5, and 9. These targets relate to ending desertification, restoring degraded land, protecting biodiversity and natural habitats, and integrating ecosystems and biodiversity into government planning, and are important for safeguarding protected areas. With the increase in spatial and temporal analysis tools, applying multi-sensor remote sensing and machine learning, including the use of GeoAI, it is possible to detect land cover transitions, forest degradation, and biomass trends at finer temporal and spatial scales. Moreover, they can integrate the Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) approach, which has been successfully implemented in many of the West African dryland countries, particularly in the Sahel region, where land degradation, deforestation, and climate vulnerability are most severe. Such initiatives led by the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initia tive (AFR100) and the Great Green Wall of the Sahara and Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI), including National REDD + strategies and NDCs for climate mitigation and adaptation approaches, need to integrate the interplay framework dynamics between LUC, carbon emissions, and climate change for effective regional ecosystem resilience. Moreover, the integration of Google Earth Engine (GEE) with AI/ML tools for near-real-time monitoring of carbon stocks in dryland reserves is particularly important for natural reserve governance and policy formulation for effective and ecological management. Filling these gaps could enhance the understanding and inform regional management practices of drylands in West Africa. For instance, in some of the key protected areas within the region, such as the W National Park, carbon storage is primarily a function of tree structure rather than the number of species, which reveals that enhancing biomass through growth of larger, denser trees may be more effective for carbon sequestration than increasing species diversity (Dimobe et al., 2019). Innovation ap proaches should be implemented in the data repository and archiving system for regional sustainable land management approaches. The projected future changes in West African drylands LUC can help improve the interpretability of the climate projection scenarios. For instance, instead of focusing on the quantity of each LUC class at various time points, which results only in a net change detection between time points, Estoque et al. (2020) recommend that the projected gross gains and gross losses in each LUC class across all scenarios with climate should also be considered. The comprehension of LULC dynamics and Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSP) and climate could improve the Fig. 7. Clustered correlation analysis of LUC effect on natural forest area in West African drylands. I.A.R. Kiribou et al. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 28 (2025) 101004 8 collaboration between the science community in addressing the chal lenges of West African drylands environmental change towards a climate-resilient and sustainable development pathway (Estoque et al., 2020). It is important to understand that the SSPs framework is devel oped in conjunction with the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), which account for levels of future radiative forcing (Fig. S1). To provide historically consistent and spatially detailed emissions datasets for other scientists collaborating in CMIP6, regional downscaling, like in the West African dryland, can be important for environmental resilience. 5.2. Limitations of the study Land use change studies are often limited by substantial in consistencies due to uncertainties. To address uncertainties in this study, we triangulated two complementary and widely recognized data sour ces. Satellite-derived datasets from the USGS Earth Resources Observa tion and Science (EROS, 2023) provide consistent, spatially explicit coverage of land use dynamics across the West African drylands. These were cross-checked against FAOSTAT country-level statistics, which are harmonized and reported by national authorities. Other limitations that should be acknowledged include potential selection bias, the restricted temporal scope, the thematic boundaries of the study, as well as variations and discrepancies across different studies in reporting and measuring land use change (LUC) impacts. The selec tion bias particularly relied on published data from literature, where studies with a more significant focus on the study area are considered. These result in leaving out other unpublished data, which may be rele vant since it is a secondary data source. In addition, there are challenges in further generalizable findings across a wide spectrum of West African dryland contexts, resulting from the heterogeneous methodologies used by the included studies. Moreover, the included studies focused on peer- reviewed articles, leaving behind important information from grey literature, policy reports, and indigenous knowledge systems that significantly play a role in dryland ecosystem resilience. The research does not consider LUC dynamics extensively outside of protected areas, which limits the carbon-related LUC emission in the broad area of the West African dryland. The temporal scope is another limitation, as LUC impacts evolve in time, and some of the related carbon emission as sessments might not be appropriate anymore as it is, due to emerging challenges in uncertainty measure. There is also a language limit, as 90 % of the countries in the review area speak French. This can lead to overlooking other important literature outside of the English language. Finally, while this review describes drivers of land use change dynamics (LUC) and its impacts on natural reserves in West African dryland with carbon and climate change implications, not evaluate them in terms of their long-term effectiveness. Thus, future empirical research would be needed to assess their sustainability and scalability for effective biodi versity conservation in this vulnerable region. 6. Conclusion Despite their ecological importance, natural reserves under the in fluence of LUC in West African drylands remain under-documented and insufficiently integrated into the combined interaction between anthropogenic LUC, carbon emission, and climate mitigation frame works. An illegal Land use change (LUC) dynamics impact on natural reserves in the West African drylands reveals an accelerating threat that constitutes a serious environmental challenge. It threatens Natural Re serves and ecological integrity, and the potential of climate change mitigation. The findings of this review highlight how anthropogenic activities are intensified by the rapid human population growth, significantly altering natural reserves. through agricultural land expansion, resource exploitation, which modifies the natural reserve’s landscape. LUC implications not only underscore the deterioration of ecosystem services and biodiversity loss, but also contribute consider ably to regional carbon emissions fluxes. This exacerbates the vulnerability of dryland ecosystems to climate change by weakening it capacity to function as effective carbon sinks through natural reserves. Therefore, there is an urgent need to strengthen land use governance, enhance monitoring of carbon fluxes, and incorporate protected areas into broader resilience and adaptation strategies. It is also necessary to incentivize training and promote carbon marketing based on GHG removal through afforestation and/or reforestation initiatives. Moving forward, a more coordinated, evidence-based approach is essential to align land use planning with conservation goals and climate action. Doing so will not only preserve biodiversity but also reinforce the role of dryland protected areas as key contributors to regional sustainability and global climate stability, and carbon finance initiatives. CRediT authorship contribution statement Issaka Abdou Razakou Kiribou: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Software, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Kangbéni Dimobe: Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision. Charles Lamoussa Sanou: Writing – review & editing. Sintayehu W. Dejene: Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Partnership for Skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering, and Technology Regional Scholarship Innovation Funds/PASET-RSIF (https://www.rsif-paset.org/) with fund number ICIPE_RS192. We are grateful to PASET-RSIF for the financial support. We are also grateful to the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) at the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom, for their guidance during our internship. We also thank our colleagues, PhD students from Haramaya University. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.indic.2025.101004. Data availability Data used are publicly available as it is review paper. Details are highlighted in the method section. References Abera, T.A., Heiskanen, J., Pellikka, P., Maeda, E.E., 2018. Rainfall–vegetation interaction regulates temperature anomalies during extreme dry events in The Horn of Africa. Global Planet. 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