Asymmetric climate drivers and residual anomalies of ecosystem resilience across the Niger River Basin

Vegetation resilience is a critical sustainability indicator for water, food, and livelihood security, yet its dynamics remain poorly quantified across the Niger River Basin (NRB) under rapid climatic and anthropogenic change. Using lag-1 autocorrelation (AC1) and variance derived from normalized difference vegetation index, enhanced vegetation index and CASA-modelled net primary productivity time series (2000–2024), we map resilience patterns and their relationships with temperature, solar radiation, and precipitation. A pronounced north–south gradient emerges: Sahelian drylands exhibit high AC1 (low resilience, slow recovery), while humid southern forests show low AC1 (high resilience, rapid recovery). Energy drivers (temperature, radiation) dominate resilience in forests and shrublands (R 2 0.5–0.8), whereas precipitation exerts divergent effects, enhancing resilience in evergreen forests but destabilizing wetlands and shrublands (R 2 –0.4 to −0.8). Critically, spatial residuals expose vulnerability hotspots (e.g., Niger, Mali, northern Nigeria) where resilience is weaker than climate alone predicts, implicating land degradation, overgrazing, and deforestation. Conversely, resilience hotspots (southern Nigeria, Cameroon) suggest stabilizing management or environmental buffers. These findings provide spatially explicit, indicator-based evidence for targeting interventions, demonstrating that effective adaptation requires integrated strategies addressing both climatic and anthropogenic pressures, a framework transferable to other dryland basins globally.