Measuring the Great Green Wall: Satellite Monitoring Against Desertification

The Great Green Wall is an African-led initiative to restore degraded land across the Sahel. Nigeria's frontline states in the north are central to it. Billions have been pledged, but one question keeps coming up: is the land actually getting greener?

The monitoring challenge Tree planting is easy to announce and hard to verify. Seedling survival, natural regeneration and farmer-managed agroforestry vary widely, and the area is vast.

How satellites help - Vegetation trends: multi-year NDVI and canopy-cover analysis show where vegetation is recovering. - Tree detection: high-resolution imagery and AI can count individual trees in drylands. - Foundation models and embeddings: consistent land-cover classification across years and countries. - Fire and grazing pressure: burn-scar mapping reveals threats to young restoration sites.

What good restoration reporting looks like 1. Geotagged project boundaries. 2. A transparent baseline before planting. 3. Annual survival and canopy metrics. 4. Community-verified ground truth. 5. Public dashboards for funders.

Why it matters for carbon finance Verified restoration can generate carbon and biodiversity credits. With Nigeria's carbon market framework now in place, good MRV turns restoration into a revenue stream for communities.

StrikeClimate builds restoration-monitoring dashboards for states, NGOs and project developers.