Geoffrey Lean has a an interesting (seriously!) report on changes to land management practices in the Sahel, which is apparently having an extraordinarily beneficial effect on life in that difficult part of the world.
The bushes turned out to be clusters of shoots from the buried stumps of long-felled trees, whose root systems still drew water and nutrients from far beneath the arid soil. The shoots could never grow much before being cut or eaten by livestock, but when Rinaudo pruned them down to a single stem and kept the animals away, they shot up into substantial trees within four years.
As the trees grew, so did crops. And as local farmers began reaping good harvests, neighbours and visitors followed suit. Now, two decades later, some 200 million trees have been regenerated in this way, covering five million hectares of Maradi and the neighbouring region of Zinder, enabling the growing of enough extra grain to feed two-and-a-half million people.
The greening of the Sahel has been noted from time to time as a benefit of climate change, but perhaps there are other effects in play as well.