Degradation of Kilombero Valley Ramsar wetlands in Tanzania

Munishi, Subira; Jewitt, Graham

doi:10.1016/j.pce.2019.03.008

Cited by 34 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Together, these snapshots of more recent wetland management experiences in Ilu Aba Bora Zone illustrate well how socio-economic, institutional and environmental change continue to shape the wetland management experiences for farmers and the status of wetlands themselves. This mirrors recent experience elsewhere in Ethiopia and Africa more broadly in terms of the impacts of climate change, land degradation, population pressure, socio-economic change, market penetration and a lack of coherent wetland policies and institutional arrangements (Sakane et al 2012;Leauthaud et al 2013;Rodenburg et al 2014;Ayeni et al 2019;Munishi and Jewitt 2019). These were all seen by farmers in these three sites as interrelated challenges with which they had to contend.…”

Section: Issues Emerging From the Fieldsupporting

confidence: 72%

Wetlands in Ethiopia: Lessons From 20 years of Research, Policy and Practice

Dixon

Wood

Hailu³

2021

Wetlands

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Throughout sub-Saharan Africa wetlands provide ecosystem services that are critical to the development needs of many people. Local wetland use, however, is often at odds with broader national policy goals in which narratives of conservation and protection dominate, hence a recurring challenge is how to reconcile these tensions through the development of policies and field practice that deliver sustainable development. In this paper we examine the extent to which this challenge has been achieved in Ethiopia, charting the changes in wetlands policy and discourse over the last twenty years while reviewing the contribution of the multidisciplinary Ethiopian Wetlands Research Programme (EWRP) (1997–2000). Our analysis suggests that despite EWRP having a significant legacy in developing national interest in wetlands among research, government and non-governmental organisations, its more holistic social-ecological interpretation of wetland management remains neglected within a policy arena dominated by specific sectoral interests and little recognition of the needs of local people. In exploring the impacts at the local level, recent investigations with communities in Ilu Aba Bora Zone highlight adjustments in wetland use that famers attribute to environmental, economic and social change, but which also evidence the adaptive nature of wetland-based livelihoods.

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Section: Issues Emerging From the Fieldsupporting

confidence: 72%

Wetlands in Ethiopia: Lessons From 20 years of Research, Policy and Practice

Dixon

Wood

Hailu³

2021

Wetlands

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“…Large-scale farming and large protected areas are further competitors for land. During the past years, teak (Tectona grandis) plantations were installed in the uplands mainly south of the Kilombero river [24]. Additionally, smallholder forest plantations are a quickly developing phenomenon throughout south-western Tanzania [41].…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Catchment-wide studies are rare, in particular in East Africa. LULC change in the Kilombero valley was addressed in several case studies [6,12,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. Only a few of these studies explored the whole catchment and only few provided an exhaustive evaluation of the generated LULC change maps.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-Term Land Use/Land Cover Change Assessment of the Kilombero Catchment in Tanzania Using Random Forest Classification and Robust Change Vector Analysis

Thonfeld

Steinbach²,

Muro

et al. 2020

Remote Sensing

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Information about land use/land cover (LULC) and their changes is useful for different stakeholders to assess future pathways of sustainable land use for food production as well as for nature conservation. In this study, we assess LULC changes in the Kilombero catchment in Tanzania, an important area of recent development in East Africa. LULC change is assessed in two ways: first, post-classification comparison (PCC) which allows us to directly assess changes from one LULC class to another, and second, spectral change detection. We perform LULC classification by applying random forests (RF) on sets of multitemporal metrics that account for seasonal within-class dynamics. For the spectral change detection, we make use of the robust change vector analysis (RCVA) and determine those changes that do not necessarily lead to another class. The combination of the two approaches enables us to distinguish areas that show (a) only PCC changes, (b) only spectral changes that do not affect the classification of a pixel, (c) both types of change, or (d) no changes at all. Our results reveal that only one-quarter of the catchment has not experienced any change. One-third shows both, spectral changes and LULC conversion. Changes detected with both methods predominantly occur in two major regions, one in the West of the catchment, one in the Kilombero floodplain. Both regions are important areas of food production and economic development in Tanzania. The Kilombero floodplain is a Ramsar protected area, half of which was converted to agricultural land in the past decades. Therefore, LULC monitoring is required to support sustainable land management. Relatively poor classification performances revealed several challenges during the classification process. The combined approach of PCC and RCVA allows us to detect spatial patterns of LULC change at distinct dimensions and intensities. With the assessment of additional classifier output, namely class-specific per-pixel classification probabilities and derived parameters, we account for classification uncertainty across space. We overlay the LULC change results and the spatial assessment of classification reliability to provide a thorough picture of the LULC changes taking place in the Kilombero catchment.

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“…As a consequence of the high land pressure, the LULC of the Kilombero catchment has considerably changed in recent decades [5,19,27,[34][35][36]. By 2014, around 18% of the catchment's natural vegetation had been converted to cropland [36].…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Complex Socio-Ecological Systems: Translating Narratives into Future Land Use and Land Cover Scenarios in the Kilombero Catchment, Tanzania

et al. 2021

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The Kilombero wetland in Tanzania is affected by advancing land use and land cover changes (LULCC), where we observe a conflict between development interests and the necessity of conservation measures to maintain the functionalities of the ecosystem. Thus, assessing patterns of LULCC is crucial to foresee potential future developments and to develop sustainable future management strategies. In this study, we use a multi-method scenario approach to assess the spatial implications and underlying driving forces of potential change by (1) developing a System Dynamics Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) to disentangle the underlying socio-economic and ecologic driving forces, (2) deriving a qualitative business-as-usual (BAU) and a conservation scenario from participatory narratives elaborated during a stakeholder workshop, and (3) quantifying the spatial implications of these scenarios with the Land Change Modeler (LCM). Results indicate that under the BAU assumption only 37% of the natural vegetation is expected to persist until 2030 in the wetland. In contrast, strict enforcement of protected areas (conservation scenario) halts further conversion of the wetland. However, both scenarios pinpoint considerable expansions of cropland in the western highlands with potentially serious impacts on catchment-wide hydrological processes. The produced qualitative and quantitative outputs reveal hotspots of possible future change and starting points for advisable further research and management interventions.

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Degradation of Kilombero Valley Ramsar wetlands in Tanzania

Cited by 34 publications

References 25 publications

Wetlands in Ethiopia: Lessons From 20 years of Research, Policy and Practice

Wetlands in Ethiopia: Lessons From 20 years of Research, Policy and Practice

Long-Term Land Use/Land Cover Change Assessment of the Kilombero Catchment in Tanzania Using Random Forest Classification and Robust Change Vector Analysis

Complex Socio-Ecological Systems: Translating Narratives into Future Land Use and Land Cover Scenarios in the Kilombero Catchment, Tanzania

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