Our recent Ecosystem Health Baseline looked at Somalia’s environment and communities from many points of view to better understand the current state of ecosystem services and socioecological dynamics.
BRCiS staff collect soil samples in Guricel, Somalia as part of the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework. Photo: ACF.
BRCiS staff collect soil samples in Guricel, Somalia as part of the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework. Photo: ACF.
We collected field-level biophysical data, including one of the most comprehensive scientific soil sampling exercises ever in Somalia, and a community survey with BRCiS Member field staff. We then used remote sensing data from satellites and existing ICRAF datasets from other countries to scale up the analysis, model key indicators, and compare project areas.
This was the first time that the health of the soil, land and vegetation in these areas has been assessed using such a rigorous, systematic protocol.
Beatrice Ndubi, a CIFOR-ICRAF lab technician, analyses a soil sample from Somalia. Photo: Ann Wavinya/ICRAF.
Beatrice Ndubi, a CIFOR-ICRAF lab technician, analyses a soil sample from Somalia. Photo: Ann Wavinya/ICRAF.
This may sound technical, but the findings are very practical and reflect the realities that communities in Somalia face on a day-to-day basis. This section summarizes our results and shows what they mean at a field level.
This section also introduces two incredible publicly available tools that you – donors, governments, programmes, field staff, and community members – can use to inform, prioritize, and track projects and investments that put nature first.
Unfortunately, we discovered that Somali ecosystems are highly degraded.
But take heart – even though our findings show consistently high degradation, the real story lies in the differences between sites, which you can explore in the interactive map below. These variations offer crucial clues about what services nature is still providing, where resilience remains, and how we can get nature back to giving life once again.
Compared to healthy landscapes, degraded lands are less productive, more vulnerable to floods and droughts, have a low carbon sequestration potential, and emit high levels of CO2 into the atmosphere. This means that the people who live on them are less food secure, less water secure, have less stable livelihoods, and are more at-risk of disasters.
You can read about all of the indicators we looked at in our full technical report. Here, we introduce you to five of the measures we used to arrive at this conclusion: precipitation, tree cover, grass cover, erosion, and soil organic carbon content (SOC).
Explore our results in this interactive dashboard – in each map, darker colours signify better health.
The following sections explain more about these measures and why they are important.
Precipitation
Rainfall is a critical ecosystem service, directly providing fresh drinking water for people and livestock and supporting the growth of plant life, including on agricultural and grazing land.
While average precipitation is low across the arid landscape in Somalia, it varies seasonally and is a major part of the water cycle, replenishing rivers, lakes, soil moisture and aquifers that provide for human and animal life year-round.
Importantly, as ecosystems become degraded, the rainfall they receive also becomes less effective, as soil loses its ability to retain moisture.
Degraded soil leads to runoff, silting of waterways, greater flood risk and compounded degradation through sheet erosion. This means that even if a location receives 200mm of rainfall each year, in degraded landscapes the effective rainfall is even lower, as less of that water is available to plants, animals and humans.
For example, although annual rainfall is 156mm in the area around Yeed village in Rabdhuure District – roughly 50% higher than several areas in Galmudug – the soil can absorb very little, only up to 13mm of water per hour. This results in very high runoff when it rains. This is one reason we selected the area between Yeed and Balicade villages for one of BRCiS’ first major ecosystem resilience projects, which you can read more about in Chapter Three.
The ecosystem health baseline team collects samples of soil with low infiltration capacity in Dhardhar. Photos: IRC.
The ecosystem health baseline team collects samples of soil with low infiltration capacity in Dhardhar. Photos: IRC.
Of the eight sites where we collected soil samples, six had low soil infiltration capacity.
Tree and grass cover
Vegetative cover such as trees, shrubs and grasses provide ecosystem services such as feed for Somali communities’ many livestock, shade, building materials and firewood, amongst others. Vegetation also filters the air, sequesters carbon, regulates water, and moderates the climate. As tree cover is often naturally low in arid, dryland systems like Somalia, grass cover is particularly important for feeding livestock, storing carbon and preventing erosion.
When an ecosystem has enough healthy vegetation, rainfall can be more easily absorbed by the land, contributing to soil moisture, recharging groundwater, and reducing flood risk. When there is not enough—or any—vegetation to catch the rain before it hits the ground and to stabilize the soil through a root system, rainfall can lead to erosion and degradation, more rapid and devastating floods, and further degradation of the landscape.
Tree and grass cover – some of nature's best flood defences – are both low across the areas where we operate.
Imagine living in a settlement this barren, displaced from your home and exposed to the scorching sun and blowing dust resulting from a complete lack of trees and grass cover. Aerial photo: BRCiS.
Imagine living in a settlement this barren, displaced from your home and exposed to the scorching sun and blowing dust resulting from a complete lack of trees and grass cover. Aerial photo: BRCiS.
The loss of vegetation in pastoral areas is largely caused by overgrazing, unsustainable rangeland management practices, and the compounding impacts of recurrent drought and degradation.
- In some locations, social dynamics and even humanitarian assistance have led herd sizes to grow too large for the carrying capacity of the landscape.
- In most, herds are turned out on rangelands too soon—as soon as the vegetation begins to germinate—rather than allowing the land to rest and the vegetation to mature and regenerate before being grazed. In part, this is an unintended consequence of new technology such as improved forecasting and cell phones, which enable herds to reach viable pasture sites more quickly.
- Finally, the increasing frequency and severity of drought is significantly reducing the ability of the land and vegetation to recover between lengthy drought cycles.
Outside of deserts, there is no bare ground in nature. Seeing exposed ground like this is a sure sign of an underlying issue affecting ecosystem services. Photo: BRCiS.
Outside of deserts, there is no bare ground in nature. Seeing exposed ground like this is a sure sign of an underlying issue affecting ecosystem services. Photo: BRCiS.
In terms of soil health, this leads to bare and compacted land, which limits germination of grasses in historical rangelands. It also means that livestock shift from consuming grasses to more trees and shrubs. Ultimately, this leads to lower milk production, meat yields, and prices for livestock that are sold, reducing food security and nutrition within pastoral communities.
Urbanisation also has an undeniable impact on tree and grass cover. As part of the Ecosystem Health Baseline, we also looked at satellite imaging showing how vegetation has changed over the last two decades.
While it has increased in some places, vegetation has decreased considerably around Kismaayo, Baidoa, and Afgoye towns, areas that have experienced high levels of urbanization—and therefore landscape clearing—due to drought-, conflict- and economic migration.
Use the orange slider below to see how changes in vegetation look on satellite imagery (where red and orange indicate reduced vegetation over the last two decades) compared to an aerial photo of cleared land in an IDP camp in Baidoa. Notice the near-total lack of trees.
Satellite imagery from BRCiS' interactive dashboard developed by ICRAF Spatial Lab. Aerial photo: Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC.
For communities living in these locations, this has led to:
- More exposure to extreme temperatures and wind due to the lack of shade,
- Reduced food security and nutrition resulting from poor productivity of degraded rangeland and croplands,
- Increased protection and security risks, resulting from the need to travel farther and farther away to find firewood (an activity often undertaken by women) and to graze animals (men), and
- Much greater risk of severe flooding, including flash floods in rain-fed regions of Somalia as evidenced in the devastating 2023 floods in Baidoa.
Soil organic carbon (SOC)
Soil organic carbon (SOC) content is an important measure of soil health and its ability to provide ecosystem services that indirectly support human life such as food production, nutrient cycling, water retention, carbon sequestration, erosion control, and habitat provision.
High SOC soil (>15g/kg) is healthy and nutrient-rich, as decomposing organic matter releases nutrients necessary for plant growth, supporting healthy and nutritious crop production, grazing lands, and tree and grass cover.
The soil in most of the areas where we work is unhealthy, with either extremely low (<5g/kg) or low (<10g/kg) SOC.
This limits plant growth, reduces the nutrient content of crops and vegetation that does grow, enables erosion, and makes the consequences of natural shocks like droughts and flooding even more extreme.
In part, this measure reflects the natural aridity of the climate, but it is also caused by extreme weather events, poor plant cover, high rates of erosion, and maladaptive land management practices that degrade the soil and reduce its capacity to contribute to the ecosystem and support its communities.
Erosion
Many of the above concerns – such as inadequate and excessive rainfall (resulting in drought and flooding), limited vegetative cover, poor soil health, and unsustainable land management practices such as overgrazing and land clearing – contribute to erosion, the process in which soil is washed away. Some people refer to this as the moment that soil becomes dirt.
There are several types of erosion, each of which look different on the ground. Sheet erosion occurs when the topsoil of a large area is gradually worn away, often in recently ploughed fields and on bare ground. While sheet erosion is not always noticeable, it can result in the loss of large amounts of soil. As runoff increases, it often forms small, shallow channels in the soil called rills. Rill erosion carries topsoil into waterways, making rivers muddy, increasing water levels, and reducing water quality. When unaddressed rills deepen and widen, or when fast flowing runoff hits a weak spot in the soil, larger gullies form.
This massive gulley – approximately 1.5 meters deep and 150+ meters long – opened up in Bonkay farm during the El Nino rain event of November 2023. Once it appeared, the farmers of Bonkay were afraid to plant anything in the area above it, effectively cutting their farm size in half almost overnight. Photo: BRCiS.
This massive gulley – approximately 1.5 meters deep and 150+ meters long – opened up in Bonkay farm during the El Nino rain event of November 2023. Once it appeared, the farmers of Bonkay were afraid to plant anything in the area above it, effectively cutting their farm size in half almost overnight. Photo: BRCiS.
These rills and gullies eventually become super highways that rapidly drain water away from the place where it is most needed – like our farms – and deposit it where it does the most harm – in overflowing rivers, or even in our own homes.
Check out this video with BRCiS Program Manager Isaiah Sciford to see the downslope effects of soil erosion in Bonkay.
Regardless of the type, in addition to removing soil and nutrients from ecosystems, erosion reduces water availability and quality, alters landscapes, and destroys habitats. Furthermore, eroded soils release CO2 into the atmosphere and can only store limited amounts of carbon.
Erosion is very high in the areas where we work.
Erosion is especially significant in plots with thickets and bush and shrub land and is lower in forests, grasslands, and croplands, where vegetation can hold the soil together. It is therefore critical to restore good stewardship of forests and grazing lands in order to recover the soils and prevent further damage.
As you can see, the extent of degradation in the areas where we work is extensive, and nursing nature back to health is critical. The data and modelling from the Ecosystems Health Baseline will continue to inform our work as we move ahead. To keep this perspective front and centre and continue our learning journey with effective monitoring, we have developed and adopted a few tools that we think will help you too.
Our new data dashboard
We’ve developed a public, satellite-driven dashboard that helps us make decisions and prioritize our work – and you can use it too!
This screenshot from our data dashboard – which you can access at the link below – shows how ecosystem health varies across Somalia, in areas where we work and others. Purple areas indicate good land health and tree cover. As you can see, we mostly work in the white/lighter areas where tree cover is minimal and land health is poor. Dashboard: ICRAF Spatial Lab.
This screenshot from our data dashboard – which you can access at the link below – shows how ecosystem health varies across Somalia, in areas where we work and others. Purple areas indicate good land health and tree cover. As you can see, we mostly work in the white/lighter areas where tree cover is minimal and land health is poor. Dashboard: ICRAF Spatial Lab.
Please be patient. The dashboard takes time to load.
In addition to showing tree cover, land health and vegetation trends across the country, the interactive map visualizes restoration priorities and estimates how much restoration effort is needed. This allows us to identify both “quick wins” and critical areas that require more intensive and comprehensive restoration efforts.
This dashboard provides us with information that we can use as part of our decision-making and prioritization process. After an intensive training on how to interpret each map view, we used the dashboard to identify the most relevant approaches to address community-specific disaster risks in the communities where we work.
BRCiS staff and ICRAF experts review and validate findings from the Ecosystem Health Baseline Assessment during a workshop in December 2024. Photo: Kelvin Muchiri/ICRAF.
BRCiS staff and ICRAF experts review and validate findings from the Ecosystem Health Baseline Assessment during a workshop in December 2024. Photo: Kelvin Muchiri/ICRAF.
While the dashboard specifically delineates the areas where we work, the spatial data is available for nearly all of southern and central Somalia, meaning that implementers, government ministries, and the public operating anywhere in the country can actively use this data and modelling to understand the landscape, assess needs and make important decisions.
Making restoration monitoring easy: The ReGreening App
Although we knew participatory ecosystem restoration needed to be a major component of the latest iteration of the BRCiS programme, we had some concerns about how to track our progress on key indicators.
ICRAF’s ReGreening App – an easy-to-use “citizen science” tool – has turned out to be a very accessible way to monitor our restoration efforts. The ReGreening App allows us, the communities we work with, and our donors to literally see our progress at the ground level.
Check out this short video to learn more about the ReGreening App.
The ReGreening App has specialized modules for tree planting, nursery establishment, Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) and training – all of which we are undertaking as part of our restoration approach. Through our collaboration with ICRAF, we’ve also contributed to the development of a rangeland module that will be released soon.
Use the green slider below to see some of the ReGreening App’s mobile data collection and desktop reporting functionalities.
We have embedded the ReGreening App into our monitoring system to track ecosystem-related indicators such as the number of hectares under restoration. We have found it to be practical, easy to integrate within our existing workflows, aligned with Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools like transect walks, and able to delineate specific locations. This means that we can track progress on indicators like tree cover at an exact point to see if there has been a change. In addition to feeding back to our programme managers and Members, the app is making it easy to provide our donors and other stakeholders with evidence on where restoration is happening.
Learn more about the ReGreening App‘s functionality in this video, with Tor-Gunnar Vågen, Principal Scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF.
More collaborations like this – that stretch across the humanitarian, development and science sectors – are needed to create greater impact. Skip ahead to Chapter Four to read our advice for implementers and funders – including on the value of data, science, and partnerships – or continue to Chapter Three below.
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