In Sahelian countries, woodfuels, fuelwood and charcoal, are the major energy sources for millions of rural and urban dwellers. The growing demand of big cities increases the pressure on the natural resources, and would certainly causes, in the long-term, a marked decline in the regeneration of forest resources. In this context, the understanding of the spatial structure of urban catchment areas, is a major issue for defining new management rules of forest resources. The spatial modelisation of Bamako's catchment area, used as an heuristic process, shows that the main determinant of the localisation, and of the intensity, of woodfuels flows, is the type of organisation of selling places in rural areas. The presence of a rural weekly market is more important than the distance to Bamako. This attribute of the trades is often neglicted in most existing spatial models, which are mainly based on transportation costs. Considering its ability to predict wood flows and to measure development potentials, the spatial model can be used to plan fair and efficient actions to make Bamako's supply more sustainable.
