Spatial Analysis of Land Use by Cattle Herds in a Village of the Sudanese Zone in Senegal. Application for Grazing System Improvement

Spatial analysis of land use by cattle herds in the sub-humid area of Senegal is conducted through the utilisation of a Geographic Information System. This tool allows us to establish relationships between spatial practices, ruminant nutrition and performances. It gives leads to proposals for the improvement of the extensive ruminant feeding system

Innovative Approaches to Analysing Carbon Sequestration as a Mitigation Strategy in Tropical Pasture Landscapes in Two Emblematic Contexts, the Amazon and the West African Sahel

The relationship between ruminant production systems and climate change is complex. As a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the sector has been the subject of considerable controversy, with particularly severe criticism in the 2000s. However, ten years ago, the attitude towards grazing lands began to change. Their efficient use of non-renewable energy and their contribution to carbon (C) sequestration were considered as key factors in the new environmental challenge. The reality of this mitigation potential was recently called into question once again in the global agriculture and climate change debate, including that of sequestration in the soil where grazing lands occupy a major position (30-40% of the land surface representing 30% of the soil organic C of the world). Few scientific references are available on these questions in tropical regions, and the standard metrics and methods used may turn out to be unsuitable for the correct evaluation of grazed ecosystems in these regions. Significant work is therefore required to establish baselines and design strategies to ensure sustainable grazing in these regions where the global sequestration potential is high relative to the surface areas concerned. To contribute to this debate, we focus on mitigation options offered by rangelands and grasslands and their management in two emblematic tropical contexts, humid and dry tropics, where field studies have been based on original and holistic approaches at different levels. In Amazonia, if curbing deforestation remains a priority, it needs to be accompanied by sustainable management of deforested areas. In the French Amazon (French Guiana), monitoring fields using chronosequences and flux towers has produced scientific knowledge on the significant mitigation capacities of grassland ecosystems. In the Brazilian Amazon, the spatial logic of the agro-ecological intensification of forage production has enabled a transition from individual extractive systems to farm management at communal levels. In the West African Sahelian region (Northern Senegal), an integrative study at landscape scale revealed the unexpected capacity of soil and shrubs for C sequestration that can offset the GHG emissions for which pastoralism in dry tropical zones is usually blamed

Contrasting deficits on executive functions between ADHD and reading disabled children

BACKGROUND. The object of this study was to analyze the executive functioning of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or reading disability (RD) independent of their non-executive deficits. METHODS: Three carefully diagnosed groups of children, aged between 7 and 12 years (35 ADHD, 22 RD and 30 typically developing children), were tested on a wide range of tasks related to five major domains of executive functioning (EF): inhibition, visual working memory, planning, cognitive flexibility, and verbal fluency. Additional tasks were selected for each domain to control for non-executive processing. RESULTS: ADHD children were impaired on interference control, but not on prepotent and ongoing response suppression. ADHD showed deficits on visual working memory, planning, cognitive flexibility and phonetic fluency. RD children were impaired on phonetic fluency. The only EF measure that differentiated ADHD from RD was planning. CONCLUSIONS: The present sample of ADHD children showed several EF deficits, whereas RD children were almost spared executive dysfunction, but exhibited deficits in phonetic fluency