Assessing the Impacts of Land Use and land cover change on Pastoral Livestock Farming in South-Eastern Burkina Faso

Abstract

Conversion of pastures to cropland is one of the most important issues facing livestock farming in Burkina Faso. This study examined the impact of land use/cover change on pastoral livestock farming in Boulgou province between 1980 and 2013. Landsat satellite images (1989, 2001 and 2013) and socio-economic data were analysed. The interpretation of the classified Landsat images revealed an increase in cropland from 20.5% in 1989 to 36.7% in 2013. This resulted mainly from the conversion of woody savannah and shrub and grass savannah to cropland. Pastoral livestock farmers reported that the major drivers of vegetation loss were drought (95.1 %), population growth (91.8%), cropland increase (91.4%), extraction of fuel wood (69.8%) and increase in livestock population (65.4). These changes affect livestock farming through reduction of pasture, poor access to water and reduction of livestock mobility routes according to the farmers. This calls for regional and national policies to protect grazing areas in Burkina Faso that are similar to policies being implemented for forest and other types of vegetation cover in other countries. For such pastoral policies to be successful, issues concerning the mobility of livestock farmers must be enshrined into such policies and this study is an example of information source for these policies.

Assessment of Changes in Land Cover by Deforestation in Kurmi LGA, Taraba State, Nigeria Using Remote Sensing/Geographic Information System

“…The decrease in agricultural land has resulted in a reduction of crop production in the study area. These results are similar to other findings from which rural communities perceived that land use and land cover changes resulted in decreased agricultural land, forest resources, depletion of water resources and wetlands (Gessesse & Bewket, 2014;Kirma et al, 2016;Benti et al, 2017;Karki et al, 2018).…”

Restitution of fresh organic matter to the soil by woody plants in the fields of ANR in the Maradi region of central eastern Niger

“…The difference in diversity may be related to the potential of the agro-ecological zone of the two areas. These results corroborate those of Zounon (2021) and Kiema (2007) who reported that agroecological zones influence floristic diversity. In addition, differences in dendrometric parameters can be explained firstly by the age of the ANR and secondly by the level of involvement of producers in scaling up the ANR in their fields under ANR.…”

Climate Variability Adaptation Strategies: Challenges to Livestock Mobility in South-Eastern Burkina Faso

“…However, the results were quite different from findings of [44] [45]. The author reported similar adaptation strategies consisting in the use of crop residue (98.4%), the use of fodder trees (42.3%), herd destocking (44.8%).…”

“…Although, there are many climate change impacts on livestock [20] [24] [33], the respondents mentioned the following as the most important (Table 2). These are affecting mobile herding during the last decades within Kompienga province.…”