Assessment of environmental impacts of river basin development on the riverine forests of eastern Kenya using multi-temporal satellite data

Maingi, John K.; Marsh, Stuart E.

doi:10.1080/01431160010031298

Cited by 35 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The combined decrease in forested/dense vegetation coverage (~9%) and water coverage (~2%) almost balances the increase in agricultural land (~11%). This is a reflection of the direct conversion of forested and riverine areas to agricultural production, consistent with the earlier findings of Maingi & Marsh (2001). The decrease in savannah vegetation is also consistent with changes in savannah/grassland areas to barren grounds reflected by an increase in barren acreage.…”

Section: Land Cover Classification Over Kenyasupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Spatial Variability Of Temperature and Precipitation Over Kenyamentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Similar changes (depicted in Figs. 2 & 3) were noted earlier by Maingi & Marsh (2001), who indicated that intensive agriculture over most of the region took place after 1995, leading to a tremendous reduction in forest cover.Hence, to further examine precipitation and temperature differences over the 3 years and also investigate how land cover/use over the region contributes to the observed fluctuations, we focus our analysis on the western part of the country, which is the main agricultural basket of the region. We divided the agricultural/forest zone into 2 regions (Fig.…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Effects of land use changes on climate in the Greater Horn of Africa

Otieno¹,

Anyah²

2012

Clim. Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT:The relationships between historical land use transformations and spatio-temporal patterns of precipitation and temperature over the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) were examined based on Landsat satellite observations for the years 1986, 1995, and 2000 and regional climate model simulations in the period 1991−2000. The satellite-derived land use/cover classification shows increased conversion of large portions of forests over the GHA to agriculture, par ticularly in Kenya, with land (acreage) under crops increasing from 6.55% in 1986 to almost 18% by the year 2000. Sensitivity experiments performed with regional climate model, Version 4 (RegCM4), indicate that expanding agriculture into forested areas led to a modest reduction in monthly rainfall totals and also may be contributing to notable shifts in moisture convergence zones and centers of rainfall maxima. Student's t-test at a 0.1 significant level showed a decrease in precipitation and an increase in surface temperature around the lake region when surface vegetation cover is converted to agricultural land cover type. Conversely, under the assumption that large sections of croplands are converted to forest, the simulations resulted in a modest increase in precipitation and a reduction of surface temperature around the lake region, changes that are significant at the 0.1 confidence level. A substantial trade-off in the components of the surface energy balance between sensible heat flux (SHF) and latent heat flux (LHF) was observed for the different conversion types. Under the assumption of reforestation, both SHF and LHF increased. The increase in SHF was almost twice that of LHF. On the other hand, when land cover types were converted to agricultural types, SHF decreased, while LHF did not show any significant change.KEY WORDS: Regional climate modeling · Land use/land cover change · Land cover classification · Climate variability Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisher OPEN PEN ACCESS CCESS Contribution to CR Special 29 'The regional climate model RegCM4'Clim Res 52: [77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95] 2012 Several attempts have been made to understand past climate changes and to project potential future climate changes by incorporating reconstructed historical land cover changes and projected possible future land cover changes into numerical simulations (e.g Xue 1997, Chase et al. 2000. Recent studies such as that of Feddema et al. (2005) suggest that land use/cover change is a first-order climate effect at the global scale. Therefore, interactions between the biosphere and atmosphere have been the focus of numerous climate-modeling studies (e.g. Taylor et al. 2002). Recently, Ge et al. (2007) incorporated moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer data of the leaf area index and vegetation fractional cover in the regional atmospheric modeling system (RAMS). The objective was to examine how the classification accuracy of a land cover data set employed in a land ...

show abstract

Section: Land Cover Classification Over Kenyasupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Spatial Variability Of Temperature and Precipitation Over Kenyamentioning

confidence: 90%

mentioning

confidence: 90%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Effects of land use changes on climate in the Greater Horn of Africa

Otieno¹,

Anyah²

2012

Clim. Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Using Landsat MSS (1975, 1984), Landsat TM (1985, and SPOT HRV (1989,1996) data for the study area, Maingi & Marsh (2001) demonstrated a reduction in the meandering rate for the Tana River since construction of the Masinga Dam. Various studies along the Tana River floodplain have documented poor regeneration of many of the forest species (Marsh, 1976;Hughes, 1985;Medley, 1990;Maingi, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Quantifying hydrologic impacts following dam construction along the Tana River, Kenya

Maingi

Marsh

2002

Journal of Arid Environments

208

136

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The Tana gallery forests are currently undergoing rapid depletion and fragmentation through clearing for agriculture, extraction of construction material, and forest die-back induced by increasingly xeric conditions associated with changes in river course and upstream dam construction (Maingi and Marsh, 2001;Suleman et al, 2001). Most studies on the forests have revealed a lack of regeneration which was attributed to various factors, among them, decreased peak flows (Marsh, 1976;Hughes, 1988;Medley, 1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%