A new data collection distributed by NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) provides insight into the vulnerability of West Africa’s coastline to climate stresses. The 16 datasets comprising the West Africa Coastal Vulnerability Mapping data collection are part of a larger study looking at the economic, social, and natural systems in West Africa that will be exposed to future sea-level rise, storm surge, and riparian floods. Collection datasets include information ranging from crop production, demographic and health survey data, population projections through 2050, and a subset of global mammal and amphibian richness grids for the West African coastal zone.
The area covered in the collection extends from Guinea-Bissau in the Northwest to Cameroon in the Southeast, a 200-kilometer coastal zone that is larger than what might normally be construed as “coastal.” This large area was used because the economic impacts of climate change will not be confined to the coastline itself, but will extend further inland. In fact, almost half of the region’s population—24 million people—live within 200 kilometers of the coast.
