Mapping livestock movements in Sahelian Africa

TL;DR

This paper presents a framework for mapping livestock movement routes in Sahelian Africa by combining mobility networks with landscape connectivity, aiding disease control and land use planning.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to map potential livestock paths using mobility networks and landscape conductance layers, addressing data scarcity and variability.

Findings

Identified high-passage areas for livestock in Senegal and Mauritania.

Demonstrated seasonal differences in livestock movement patterns.

Provided a tool for disease control and land management planning.

Abstract

In the dominant livestock systems of Sahelian countries herds have to move across territories. Their mobility is often a source of conflict with farmers in the areas crossed, and helps spread diseases such as Rift Valley Fever. Knowledge of the routes followed by herds is therefore core to guiding the implementation of preventive and control measures for transboundary animal diseases, land use planning and conflict management. However, the lack of quantitative data on livestock movements, together with the high temporal and spatial variability of herd movements, has so far hampered the production of fine resolution maps of animal movements. This paper proposes a general framework for mapping potential paths for livestock movements and identifying areas of high animal passage potential for those movements. The method consists in combining the information contained in livestock mobility networks with landscape connectivity, based on different mobility conductance layers. We illustrate our approach with a livestock mobility network in Senegal and Mauritania in the 2014 dry and wet seasons.