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Background: The West African country of Burkina Faso (BFA) is an example for the enduring importance of traditional plant use today. A large proportion of its 17 million inhabitants lives in rural communities and strongly depends on local plant products for their livelihood. However, literature on traditional plant use is still scarce and a comprehensive analysis for the country is still missing.
Methods: In this study we combine the information of a recently published plant checklist with information from ethnobotanical literature for a comprehensive, national scale analysis of plant use in Burkina Faso. We quantify the application of plant species in 10 different use categories, evaluate plant use on a plant family level and use the relative importance index to rank all species in the country according to their usefulness. We focus on traditional medicine and quantify the use of plants as remedy against 22 classes of health disorders, evaluate plant use in traditional medicine on the level of plant families and rank all species used in traditional medicine according to their respective usefulness.
Results: A total of 1033 species (50%) in Burkina Faso had a documented use. Traditional medicine, human nutrition and animal fodder were the most important use categories. The 12 most common plant families in BFA differed considerably in their usefulness and application. Fabaceae, Poaceae and Malvaceae were the plant families with the most used species. In this study Khaya senegalensis, Adansonia digitata and Diospyros mespiliformis were ranked the top useful plants in BFA. Infections/Infestations, digestive system disorders and genitourinary disorders are the health problems most commonly addressed with medicinal plants. Fabaceae, Poaceae, Asteraceae, Apocynaceae, Malvaceae and Rubiaceae were the most important plant families in traditional medicine. Tamarindus indica, Vitellaria paradoxa and Adansonia digitata were ranked the most important medicinal plants.
Conclusions: The national-scale analysis revealed systematic patterns of traditional plant use throughout BFA. These results are of interest for applied research, as a detailed knowledge of traditional plant use can a) help to communicate conservation needs and b) facilitate future research on drug screening.
Understanding land cover degradation patterns and the effects of geomorphological units on phytodiversity is important for guiding management decisions and restoration strategies in the Sahelian vulnerables zones. This paper describes land cover degradation by combining Landsat TM image analysis and field data measurements in the Gourouol catchment of the Sahelian zone of Burkina Faso. Erdas Imagine 9.2 and Arc-GIS.10 were applied. The change patterns were obtained by superposing land cover maps for 1992 and 2010. The field data were collected by the mean of inventories according to the Braun-Blanquet phytosociological relevés methods. Plot sizes were 50 m x 20 m for woody species and 10 m x 10 m for herbaceous species. Six land cover types were identified and mapped: cultivated lands, bared lands, lowlands, which all spatially increased; and shrub-steppes, grasslands and water bodies, which all spatially decreased. The dynamic patterns based on the geomorphological units were non-degraded lowlands, stable sand dunes and degraded glacis. High plant diversity was found in lowlands, whereas low diversity occurred in glacis. A significant dissimilarity was observed between communities. The Shannon diversity indices in plant communities were approximately close to ln(species richness). The Pielou indices were close to 1, indicating a species fairly good distribution. Our results showed a variation of land cover over time and the effects of geomorphological units on phytodiversity. Furthermore, this variation helps oppose land degradation in the Sahel.
L’étude s’inscrit dans le cadre de la valorisation des bois sacrés dans un contexte de conservation de la biodiversité, elle a pour objectifs de recenser les différents bois sacrés au nord du Burkina Faso, d’évaluer leur richesse floristique et d’appréhender leurs mécanismes de gestion par les populations locales. Des prospections ont été conduites sur l’ensemble de la zone d’étude en vue de recenser les bois sacrés. Dans chaque localité des enquêtes ont été conduites auprès des populations directement ou indirectement impliquées dans la gestion de ces formations. Des relevés phytosociologiques ont été réalisés dans les différentes formations végétales (bois sacrés et formations adjacentes) suivant la méthode Braun-Blanquet (1932) sur des placeaux de 1000 m2 et de 100 m2 respectivement pour les ligneux et les herbacées, en vue de déterminer les différentes phytocoenoses. 190 bois sacrés ont été recensés dont 35 ont fait l’objet d’inventaires phytosociologiques. 35 formations adjacentes ont également fait l’objet d’inventaires afin de mieux apprécier l’importance des bois sacrés dans la conservation des espèces. Le traitement des données phytosociologiques s’est effectué sur la base de 162 relevés, au moyen du logiciel CAP (Community Analysis Package). Les résultats ont révélé que les systèmes de gestion des ressources naturelles dans les bois sacrés sont basés sur des règles et des principes traditionnels. Ces bois sont pour la plupart des cimetières (50% du total), fétiches (17% du total) et fétiche-cimetières (27% du total). Le traitement des données phytosociologiques a permis de discriminer 11 groupements végétaux dont 05 pour la strate ligneuse et 06 pour la strate herbacée. Les relevés de 7 groupements ont été réalisés dans les bois sacrés et ceux de 4 groupements hors des bois sacrés. L’analyse de la richesse floristique d’ensemble (bois sacrés et environs) des ligneux a révélé la dominance de la famille des Leguminosae-Mimosoideae (16%) et des Combretaceae (12%). La flore herbacée quant à elle est dominée par les Poaceae (24%) et les Leguminosae- Papilionoideae (12%).