Residential mobility may be defined as the movement of residents from one house to another, or from one neighbourhood/part of a town/city to another. We reiterate, however, that the residential character of a city or neighbourhood is generally created and shaped through the locational behaviour and decisions of individuals and families. Consequently, our examination of how residents' socio-economic characteristics impact on the intra-urban residential mobility process in the Warri metropolis requires that we consider the defining criteria within the concept of residential areas. The bases used in identifying residential areas/neighbourhoods have been grouped into two major classes, namely: the environmental features/characteristics of residential neighbourhoods and the socio-economic structure of residential areas. This paper, however, concentrates on the second class of criteria. The data used in our analysis are derived from a survey into urban housi ng in the Warri Metropolis, Nigeria, in the summer of 2005. Seven hundred and sixty-two (762) respondents participated in the data gathering process. The socio-economic characteristics of respondents in all the study neighbourhoods are closely examined, after which the Logistic Regression technique was used to evaluate the relationship that exists between these variables and intra-urban residential mobility. The results of the regression analysis confirm a strong relationship between residents' socio-economic characteristics and intra-urban mobility in the Warri metropolis.

This paper critically evaluates conventional agricultural land suitability and appraisal methods in a developing country and points out their shortcomings. It also evaluates the new paradigm of precision farming with geoinformatics techniques and highlights the beneficial aspects to land use and agricultural production. In this context the paper shows that traditional physiographic, taxonomic, and land use systems prove inadequate while geoinformatics (using remote sensing data and GPS controlled point observations and soil sample data) work best in modern precision farming. An application of the new paradigm in the Orle River basin in Edo State, Nigeria is used to illustrate how precision farming strategies incorporating geoinformatics might be implemented in Africa.

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A geoinformatics-based land suitability assessment approach was used to examine the prospects for precision farming in the Savanna River basin in Nigeria. The procedure involved the overlay analysis of land use, land cover characteristics interpreted on Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery and physico-chemical soil properties and nutrient attributes in line with FAO suitability guidelines and models. The empirical analysis revealed areas of high, moderate and marginal suitability for the cultivation of maize, yam, cassava and oil palm in the basin. The critical advantages of geoinformation science technology for precision farming in a developing economy such as Nigeria were highlighted.