📖 ABSTRACT/OVERVIEW
Land Degradation Neutrality, adopted as Sustainable Development Goal 15.3, requires countries to achieve no net land degradation by 2030, yet scientifically rigorous national and sub-national LDN assessment methodologies that are adapted to semi-arid West African ecological and governance contexts have not been established for Nigeria. This dissertation makes an original contribution to LDN assessment methodology by developing and applying an integrated Earth Observation and Socioecological Systems analytical framework for semi-arid Nigeria, covering Kano, Jigawa, Kebbi, Zamfara, and Sokoto States. The UNCCD LDN indicator set, comprising land cover change, land productivity, and soil organic carbon, is implemented using Sentinel-2 time-series, MODIS productivity composites, and spectroradiometric soil organic carbon models validated against 320 field soil samples. An original extension is made to the UNCCD framework by integrating a Socioecological Degradation Feedback Index that quantifies the coupling between land degradation intensity and community adaptive capacity trajectories through longitudinal survey data at forty-eight sentinel landscape sites. Spatial convergence analysis identifies areas where all three UNCCD indicators concurrently signal degradation, constituting the highest-confidence LDN deficit zones. Counterfactual scenario modelling estimates LDN compliance probability under three land management intervention scenarios drawn from the Great Green Wall strategy. The dissertation provides Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Environment with the first UNCCD-compliant, sub-national LDN assessment baseline for the semi-arid zone and introduces the Socioecological Degradation Feedback Index as an original methodological contribution. Keywords: Land Degradation Neutrality, semi-arid Nigeria, Earth observation, SDG 15.3, socioecological systems.
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