Desertification has no single settled scientific definition (more than 100 formal definitions were in circulation as of 2005), and satellite vegetation records showing Sahel greening since the 1980s are read by different researchers either as a genuine reversal of land degradation or as a rainfall-driven rebound that leaves the underlying vulnerability unresolved, a live disagreement already on record for the Sahara-Desertification link on this atlas.
What would resolve this Long-term, ground-truthed monitoring that separates rainfall-driven vegetation greening from actual soil and land-productivity recovery, replicated across the Sahel's different rainfall zones and tested against a future return of drought conditions.
OpenDryland ecology and climatologyDesertification (Wikipedia)