Analysis of the vegetation trends using low resolution remote sensing data in Burkina Faso (1982-1999) for the monitoring of desertification

After about two decades of dramatic rainfall deficits that started in the late 1960s, the Sahel of West Africa has experienced increasing precipitation since the early 1990s. The implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) needs the identification of areas that record declining vegetation productivity over long-time periods. In this scope, we analyse the state of the vegetation productivity using long-term time series of NOAA AVHRR NDVI data and compare it to rainfall data. For this, 128 rain gauge data (RR) were compared with the integrated NDVI during the growing period (iNDVI) values in Burkina Faso from 1982 to 1999. During the analysed period, most of the studied stations in the country were stable for the iNDVI/RR (57.8%). However, 39.8% showed a weak to strong negative trend in the iNDVI/RR while only 2.4% showed a weak positive trend. These negative trends may reflect ongoing desertification processes in Burkina Faso and could be a starting point for the identification of hot-spots areas to determine where to take action to combat desertification

Plant-mediated effects on entomopathogenic fungi: how the olive tree influences fungal enemies of the olive moth, Prays oleae

The community of entomopathogenic fungi associated with the olive moth Prays oleae is specific for each generation of this insect. The entomopathogen Beauveria bassiana is almost exclusive to the phyllophagous or leaf generation, whereas Paecilomyces formosa mainly occurs in the carpophagous or fruit generation. The main objective of this work was to evaluate olive plant-mediated effects on the development (germination, growth, sporulation and spore viability) of both entomopathogens. While B. bassiana was strongly inhibited by olives, P. formosa development was more restricted by leaves. These inhibitory effects were caused by both volatile and diffusible compounds produced by olives and leaves. Specifically, the effects of two leaf volatile compounds, (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol and (Z)-3-hexenyl acetate were studied. The results suggest that olive plant organs affect entomopathogens by controlling their abundance and function, which may partly explain the occurrence of a fungal species in a specific P. oleae generation.This work is funded by FEDER through the Operational Competitiveness Programme—COMPETE—and by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology—FCT—in the scope of project PTDC/AGR-AAM/102600/2008 “Entomopathogenic fungi associated to olive pests: isolation, characterization and selection for biological control”. The first author is grateful to the Science and Technology Foundation for the PhD grant SFRH/BD/44265/2008.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio