ORIGINAL PAPER Success of three soil restoration techniques on seedling survival and growth of three plant species in the Sahel of Burkina Faso (West Africa) Philippe Bayen 1 • Anne Mette Lykke 2 • Adjima Thiombiano 1 Received: 18 September 2014 / Accepted: 12 January 2015 / Published online: 17 October 2015 Ó Northeast Forestry University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Abstract In the Sahel of Africa, where 90 % of the population depends on natural resources for their liveli- hood, a large part of the soils are structurally unstable, prone to crusting and hard setting, and have low water holding capacity, which hamper vegetation establishment. The effect of soil restoration techniques on survival and growth of seedlings of Acacia nilotica, Acacia tortilis and Jatropha curcas was tested in completely barren, degraded land in a Sahelian ecosystem in Burkina Faso. A total of 522 seedlings (174 plants of each plant species) were planted in a randomized complete block design with three replicates combining three soil preparation techniques: half-moon, zaı ¨ and standard plantation. Survival and growth rates evaluated over 20 months were significantly higher using the half-moon technique compared with the other two techniques. Survival rates of plant species planted using half-moon technique were 62.5, 28.57 and 10.71 % for A. nilotica, A. tortilis and J. curcas respec- tively, but in zaı ¨ and standard planting, seedling survival was zero. The low survival rate of J. curcas using the half- moon technique may indicate that J. curcas is unsuit- able for barren and degraded land, whereas A. nilotica and A. tortilis appear to be promising tree species for rehabil- itation of degraded land. Keywords Afforestation  Bare soil  Soil rehabilitation  Species selection  Water conservation Introduction One of the major constraints to the agro-sylvo-pastoral development of West African arid and semi-arid zones is the degradation of natural resources (Pontanier et al. 1995). In the Sahelian zone, where more than 90 % of the population depends exclusively on land resources for their livelihood (Sop et al. 2010), the combined effects of the arid climate, fragile soils and human activities (Mu¨ller and Ko¨nig 2005) have resulted in soil degradation due to crusting, hard-setting and erosion by wind and water (Mando et al. 1999). Degra- ded lands are typically characterized by impoverished or eroded soils, hydrologic instability, reduced primary pro- ductivity and lessened biological diversity (Parrotta 1992). Land degradation can, therefore, lead to shortage of food and water supplies, loss of income, resource conflicts, and environmental deterioration. In contrast, rehabilitation of land and water resources can set in motion a positive cycle that can make important contributions to alleviate poverty and to generate benefits at the community level and con- tribute substantially to sustaining life. One rehabilitation measurement can be planting trees since it can lead to soil stabilization, erosion mitigation and increased fertility (Fisher 1995) as well as increased understory biodiversity (Parrotta 1992; Parrotta et al. 1997). Recent approaches focus on the use of plantation Project funding: This research was financially supported by Understanding and Combating Desertification to Mitigate its Impact on Ecosystem Services project (UNDESERT EU-FP7 no. 243906). The online version is available at http://www.springerlink.com Corresponding editor: Chai Ruihai & Philippe Bayen phbayen@yahoo.fr 1 Laboratory of Plant Biology and Ecology, University of Ouagadougou, 03 PO Box 7021, Ouagadougou 03, Burkina Faso 2 Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark 123 J. For. Res. (2016) 27(2):313–320 DOI 10.1007/s11676-015-0159-0