Desertification and Soil Loss
Over-farming, over-grazing, and over-population of marginal lands and natural soil erosion have caused serious desertification of the region.
Major dust storms are a frequent occurrence, as well. During November 2004, a number of major dust storms hit the Chad, originating in the Bodélé Depression. This is a common area for dust storms (occurring, on average, 100 days every year).
On 25 August 2008, heavy dust storms passed over the eastern plains of Somalia and the northeast of a still drought-hit Kenya. On March 23, 2010, a major sandstorm hit Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, and inland Sierra Leone. Another struck in southern Algeria, inland Mauritania, Mali, and northern Côte d’Ivoire at the same time.
The region is at risk of desertification.
Read more about this topic: Sahel
Famous quotes containing the words soil and/or loss:
“But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have always observed, when there is as much sour as sweet in a compliment, that an Englishman is eternally at a loss within himself, whether to take it, or let it alone: a Frenchman never is.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)