The Dano basin is equipped with complete climate stations (8), stand-alone climate sensors (28) and rain gauges (5), piezometers (27), and discharge stations (16)
The Dano basin has been serving as testbed for researchers (WASCAL Competence Centre, and partners from Germany and West Africa ) and students as well to design, experiment, and disseminate various climate and environmental services through projects and research/capacity building programs. The beneficiaries include local farmers and stakeholders (extension agents and ministries), students and organizations. The list of projects implemented in Dano include GENERIA, APTE-21, and WAGRINOVA.
In 2012, three focal experimental watersheds were selected in the semi-arid Sudanian zone in three countries of Waest Africa (Burkina Faso, Benin and Ghana) as shown in Fig. 1.
The catchments comprise of a considerable number of wetlands, inland valleys, small dams (used for irrigation and animal watering) and wells/pumps resulting in complex ecosystems. The catchments are also characterized by a very high potential evapotranspiration (>1,500 mm per year) reflecting seasonal hydrologic deficits. Precarious farming technologies and quasi-inexistent water management capacities have contributed to advanced soil degradations. Stable but still low yields for cotton, maize, rice, sorghum and millet (main crops) are reached only under fertilizer use. WASCAL’s partners in Germany (University of Bonn and KIT), in collaboration with the WASCAL Competence Centre in Ouagadougou, have equipped the experimental catchments with a very dense network of automatic recording stations: (1) basic weather stations, (2) advanced climate stations, (3) soil-water-stations, (4) river gauging stations, (5) turbidity stations, piezometers installed in pumps and self-drilled boreholes, (6) soil erosion and runoff plots on different land use, (7) Phillipson Sediment Samplers, and (8) eddy-covariance stations. The following sections describe in detail the various basins and their network, activities and operations.
