**8. Conclusion**

Field observation revealed the clear partition of the Sahara in three main landscape types: The Semidesert, the Desert and the (Saharan) Savanna. Thus, the divide between desert and savanna occurs within the Saharan realm. Historical reports and sediment records reveal a stable southern boundary of the desert in the secular scale. Apparently, the boundaries of the desert are the rare climatic ones on the continent. Most savannas South of it are cultural landscapes – including 'elephantscapes' – as preserved in the Gourma/Mali. The degradation-desertification of the last 80 years resulted in a decline to a lower ecological equilibrium. However, the first steps of regeneration are always visible. Their further development, however, depends largely on the type of environments and on human interference. Several projects and initiatives evidenced a principal chance of regeneration or at least preservation. They also showed that small scale projects have a better chance to be accepted and to be continued by the local population. Il became clear that any initiative must be based on the participation of the respective population and must be conceived for a long time. We still do not know how many years or decades the different ecosystems need to fully recover – or if they will remain on a lower level of ecological equilibrium. We should consider the whole discussion and the various activities that take place on the background of a rapidly increasing demography. And finally, the situation changed completely. The general insecurity for the civil population in the regions concerned stopped most initiatives or set them in a state of 'suspense' or 'endangeredness'. As this situation exists already since more than a decade and as it will probably continue, one should accept the latter and adjust all kinds of plans and initiatives to it.

### **Acknowledgements**

Fieldwork was financially supported by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey. J.Merkt, T.Musch, and F. Neagra gave valuable suggestions for the manuscript. We are indepted to them all.

**93**

**Author details**

Erhard Schulz1

and Ludger Herrmann3

\*, Aboubacar Adamou2

provided the original work is properly cited.

, Sani Ibrahim2

1 Institut für Geographie und Geologie, Universität Würzburg, Germany

\*Address all correspondence to: erhard.schulz@mail.uni-wuerzburg.de

2 Département de Géographie, Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey, Niger

3 Institut für Bodenkunde und Standortslehre, Universität Hohenheim, Germany

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

, Issa Ousseini2

*Vegetation Dynamics. Natural versus Cultural and the Regeneration Potential. The Example…*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87030*

*Vegetation Dynamics. Natural versus Cultural and the Regeneration Potential. The Example… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87030*
