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Data on influenza vaccine immunogenicity in children are limited from tropical developing countries. We recently reported significant, moderate effectiveness of a trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV) in a controlled, cluster-randomized trial in children in rural Senegal during 2009, a year of H3N2 vaccine mismatch (NCT00893906). We report immunogenicity of IIV3 and inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) from that trial. We evaluated hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) and polio antibody titers in response to vaccination of three age groups (6 through 35 months, 3 through 5 years, and 6 through 8 years). As all children were IIV naive, each received two vaccine doses, although titers were assessed after only the first dose for subjects aged 6 through 8 years. Seroconversion rates (4-fold titer rise or increase from

Trends of biomass production and land processes in the Sahel have been widely studied since the droughts of 1970s. Satellite data have been an important source of information because of limited in situ data. Previous studies relied on the assumed existence of a relationship between vegetation productivity and the NDVI, in particular the annually integrated NDVI (iNDVI). This study examines this assumption and its limitations, based on in situ time series measurements of biomass, species composition, NDVI and soil moisture at the Dahra test site in northern Senegal. It is shown that, there are large differences between the NDVI – vegetation productivity relationships, and these differences can be linked to species composition. There is moderate correlation between NDVI and above-ground net primary productivity (ANPP) at the peak season (r2 = 0.39). In particular, the species Zornia glochidiata is characterized by high peak NDVI and low ANPP, compared to other common species such as Cenchrus biflorus and Aristida adscensionis. It is concluded that spatial and temporal variations in species dominance is likely to add noise to the relationship between NDVI and biomass. However, the seasonal cyclic fraction of the NDVI – “small seasonal integral” – reduces such noise.

A tree survey and an analysis of high resolution satellite data were performed to characterise the woody vegetation within a 10 × 10 km 2 area around a site located close to the town of Dahra in the semi-arid northern part of Senegal. The surveyed parameters were tree species, height, tree crown radius, and diameter at breast height (DBH), for which allometric models were determined. An object-based classification method was used to determine tree crown cover (TCC) from Quickbird data. The average TCC from the tree survey and the respective TCC from remote sensing were both about 3.0%. For areas beyond the surveyed areas TCC varied between 3.0% and 4.5%. Furthermore, an empirical correction factor for tree clumping was obtained, which considerably improved the estimated number of trees and the estimated average tree crown area and radius. An allometric model linking TCC to tree stem crosssectional area (CSA) was developed, which allows to estimate tree biomass from remote sensing. The allometric models for the three main tree species found performed well and had r 2 -values of about 0.7–0.8.