This study investigated the space-time drought incidence in the northeastern highlands of Ethiopia using monthly rainfall data. It also aims to predict drought events for 100 years. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was used to compute the drought severity classes of rainy months and seasons at 1-, 4-and 8-months timesteps. The Mann-Kendall's test and Sen's slope estimator were used to analyze the trends of drought events and to determine the magnitude of change. Inverse Distance Weighted spatial analysis tool was used to illustrate the spatial patterns of the drought risk events. The study detected extreme severe droughts in the belg rainy months in March 2008 and April 1984. However, during the belg season, the year 1999 was the driest for the recorded periods. On the other hand, the extremely severe droughts were observed during the kiremt rainy months were the driest years recorded in the kiremt season. The study noted that the drought risk events of months in the belg season were threefold greater than that of the months in kiremt season under moderate drought intensity class. Equally, the drought risk events of months in kiremt season were threefold greater than that of the belg season under extreme drought intensity class. Complex spatial variations of drought risk events were also observed in 1-, 4-and 8-months timesteps. During the belg seasons, the southern half was subjected to more frequent drought risk events while the northern half experienced more frequent drought risk events during kiremt season. Almost the eastern half of the livelihood zones experienced higher drought frequency events than the other parts in the 8-month timestep. The observed space-time drought risk event analysis has shown a potential threat to the rainfed agricultural practices that have a great influence on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Hence, documentation and assessment of drought risk events based on the livelihood zones are essential for drought risk management, early warning responses, localscale planning and food security management. Finally, the study recommended further research on additional indices of climatic variables such as evapotranspiration and soil water content.
According to the current land policy of Ethiopia, rural households are legally allowed to access agricultural lands. Nonetheless, the difficulty of rural population in accessing farmlands makes controversial authenticity of this land tenure to solve problems of household farmland access. This study aimed at assessing the effects of the current land tenure on augmenting household farmland access in Ethiopia. The study followed a mixed-methods research design to investigate the variables in the study. Thus, data were collected through a survey questionnaire, focus group discussion and interviews between May and June 2019. For data analysis, both descriptive and inferential statistics methods were employed. Consequently, study results indicated that the mean farmland size per household was 1.59 ha and government land allocation accounted for 41.9%. The farmland accesses of households headed by persons below 35 years were 13% and that of all female-headed households was 23.2%. It also showed that there were illegal farmland accesses via furtive farmland purchasing. On top of this, 63% of respondents perceived that the current land tenure was not a good rule. The regression analysis showed that the number of oxen, total crop production; annual income, education, and credit access were determinants of household farmland size. In conclusion, farmland scare areas in Ethiopia like Arsi zone have problems of deficient government land allocation, as well as unforeseen illicit farmland transactions. Given augmenting household farmland access, the study recommended that female-headed households have to be empowered and younger-headed households should be encouraged to enhancing their farmland accesses. The farming community should affirm to legal land regulations for maintaining their tenure arrangements. The local government should work according to land rules to liquidate illicit land markets. The national government should mitigate imbalanced farmland access by enforcing land rule acts such as land redistribution and reallocation with the consultation of the people. All level governments should strictly control alarming illegal changes of farmlands to urban areas by illicit land transactions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.