Tendances pluviometriques et mise en valeur des Bas-Fonds dans le Centre-Benin

Abstract

Agricultural income represents 70 % of the local GDP of the administrative entities, which integrate the cotton belt of the central region of Benin. This sector is subject to the influences of rainfall availability. An analysis rainfall amounts and water assessment of the soils, based on record series of the normal 1971-2000, and on information received from the local population shows that the pluviometric field of the area is changing. Indeed, since 1970, the bad space-time distribution of precipitations, the lengthening of
the duration of the great dry season, the decrease in rainfall and the reduction of the rain days impact water availability. Fortunately, the peasants develop particular strategies to adapt and to adapt the endogenous techniques to the news gives climatic conditions of use soil water. Those techniques result in a development of certain
formerly abandoned ecosystems as the marshes of which potentialities are evaluated to over 65 164 ha. These changes of land use are also characterized by the abandonment of certain crops versus the adoption
of new varietal species supported and the transformation of the endogenous techniques of soil water use.