Water, water — not everywhere: Mapping water trends for African maize

Molly Sharlach at Princeton Journal Watch: Researchers analyzed water availability trends in African maize-growing regions from 1979 to 2010. Each quarter-degree grid cell represents a 200-square-mile area and is colored according to its average water availability level during the maize growing season. In redder areas, water availability is more limited by rainfall levels, while bluer areas are more limited by evaporative demand. (Image source: Environmental Research Letters)

Today’s food production relies heavily on irrigation, but across sub-Saharan Africa only 4 percent of cultivated land is irrigated, compared with a global average of 18 percent. Small-scale farming is the main livelihood for many people in the region, who depend on rainfall to water their crops.

To understand how climate change may affect the availability of water for agriculture, researchers at Princeton University analyzed trends in the water cycle in maize-growing areas of 21 African countries between 1979 and 2010. The team examined both levels of rainfall and the evaporative demand of the atmosphere — the combined effects of evaporation and transpiration, which is the movement of water through plants.

Overall, they found increases in water availability during the maize-growing season, although the trends varied by region. The greater availability of water generally resulted from a mixture of increased rainfall and decreased evaporative demand.

However, some regions of East Africa experienced declines in water availability, the study found. “Some places, like parts of Tanzania, got a double whammy that looks like a declining trend in rainfall as well as an increasing evaporative demand during the more sensitive middle part of the growing season,” said Lyndon Estes, the study’s lead author and an associate research scholar in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs...

Researchers analyzed water availability trends in African maize-growing regions from 1979 to 2010. Each quarter-degree grid cell represents a 200-square-mile area and is colored according to its average water availability level during the maize growing season. In redder areas, water availability is more limited by rainfall levels, while bluer areas are more limited by evaporative demand. (Image source: Environmental Research Letters, from the Princeton website)