Evidence of Climate Change in the Senegal River Basin

International development policy makers are recognizing climate change and desertification as fundamental obstacles to the social and economic development of the Third World. Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the Sahel region, has been severely impacted by the compounding effects of drought, deforestation and desertification. The Senegal River Basin in the West Africa is a prime example of a region where development objectives are seriously undermined by the drought-induced desertification process. The basic hydrologic constraint on development is revealed in a time series decompositionof Senegal River annual flow volumes, which strongly suggests that water resources availability has been substantially curtailed since 1960. Two alternative time series mechanisms are hypothesized to account for the decreased flow volumes in recent decades. The first time series model suggests the presence of a long-term periodicity, while the second model hypothesizes an ARMA(1,1,) process. The second hypothesis provides a superior model fit. The stationary ARMA(1,1) model can be fitted successfully, however, only after explicitly removing a non-stationary component by linearly detrending after 1960. The implication of non-stationarity in Senegal River hydrology provides additional analytic evidence that the landscape degradation and desertification processes observed in Sahelian Africa can be in part attributed to climate change effects. Efforts to redress desertification should be at once conscious of complex socioeconomic forces exacerbating the desertification process and fundamental hydrologic constraints to river basin development.