Pastoral resource access and utilization: Quantifying the spatial and temporal relationships between livestock mobility, density and biomass availability in southern Kenya

Butt, Bilal

doi:10.1002/ldr.989

Cited by 68 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…NDVI is one of the most common remote sensed vegetation indices for measuring the plant growth and vegetation cover (Anyamba and Tucker 2005), including in the assessment of pastoral ecosystems (Butt 2010;Coughenour et al 2008). We used MODIS MOD13A2 satellite data, which are collected every 16 days at 1 km resolution, to calculate the NDVI values for our study area.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobile Pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain Distribute Themselves in an Ideal Free Distribution

Moritz¹,

Hamilton²,

Chen³

et al. 2014

Current Anthropology

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. We examined whether mobile pastoralists in the Logone floodplain of Cameroon distribute themselves according to the ideal free distribution (IFD), which predicts that the number of individuals in each area is proportional to the quality and quantity of resources in each area and that all individuals have access to the same amount of resources. We used the concept to assess the distribution of grazing pressure over available common-pool resources as evidence of a complex adaptive system in which the spatial distribution grazing pressure is adjusted to the distribution of resources through individual decision making and passive coordination of movements among individual pastoralists. We used a combination of spatial and ethnographic approaches to study the distribution of resources and mobile pastoralists in the Logone floodplain in 5 successive years and found evidence for an IFD in 3 years (2008-2009 and 2012) and an approximation of an IFD in years in which pastoralists were terrorized by armed bandits (2010) and the government reestablished security (2011). The findings support our hypothesis that there is a self-organizing management system in which pastoralists distribute themselves effectively over the available resources. The University of Chicago Press andIn this article we examine pastoral management of commonpool grazing resources in a complex social-ecological system. Specifically, we examine whether mobile pastoralists in the Logone floodplain in the Far North Region of Cameroon distribute themselves according to the theory of the ideal free distribution (IFD; Fretwell and Lucas 1969), which predicts that individuals will settle first in habitats with high-resource density and that, at any given time, all individuals have access to the same amount of resources. In assessing the distribution of grazing pressure over available common-pool resources, we use the ideal free distribution as an indicator of management of these resources in a situation in which pastoralists are committed to an ethos of open access to common-pool grazing resources (Moritz et al. 2013).Pastoralists' use of common-pool grazing resources in the Logone floodplain is best described as open access as there are no institutions that regulate pastoral use of and access to the floodplain (Moritz et al. 2013). On the contrary, pastoralists emphatically argue that access is open for everyone, and every year, after the water recedes, thousands of Arab and FulBe pastoralists from Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger move with more than 200,000 cattle into the Logone floodplain (Seignobos and Iyébi-Mandjek 2000; Zborowski 1996).Open access to common-pool resources has been equated with the tragedy of the commons (H...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobile Pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain Distribute Themselves in an Ideal Free Distribution

Moritz¹,

Hamilton²,

Chen³

et al. 2014

Current Anthropology

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“…NDVI is one of the most common remote sensed vegetation indices for measuring plant growth and vegetation cover (Anyamba and Tucker 2005), including in the assessment of pastoral ecosystems Butt 2010). It uses the spectral characteristics of different features such as vegetation, soil, and water in the red and near-infrared band regions to evaluate the condition of vegetation on the ground.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideal Free Distributions of Mobile Pastoralists in Multiple Seasonal Grazing Areas

Moritz

Hamilton

Scholte³

et al. 2014

Rangeland Ecology & Management

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“…Butt (2010) and Moritz et al (2012) reported that one GPS-tracked animal per herd may be sufficient to study the general movements and grazing patterns of the entire herd over long periods of time. Therefore, per herd, one representative female cow and male goat, both of middle social rank, were equipped with a GPS collar (GPS PLUS Globalstar, VECTRONIC Aerospace GmbH, Berlin, Germany) to record the herd's temporal and spatial mobility.…”

Section: Livestock-related Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-temporal patterns of herbage availability and livestock movements: A cross-border analysis in the Chinese-Mongolian Altay

et al. 2016

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Due to increasing population and the recent implementation of policies to intensify the use of land and water resources, the transhumant pastoral systems in the Chinese-Mongolian Altay-Dzungarian region are rapidly changing, leading to modifications of herd size, herd composition and spatial distribution of livestock grazing. This may have major consequences for the supply and quality of rangeland biomass. Despite similar topographic settings, the socio-political framework for Chinese and Mongolian pastoralists differs significantly, leading to differences in rangeland utilization. To substantiate these claims, the long-distance transhumance routes, frequency of pasture changes, daily grazing itineraries and size of pastures were recorded by means of GPS tracking of cattle and goats on 1,535 (China) and 1,396 (Mongolia) observation days. The status quo of the main seasonal pastures was captured by measuring the herbage offer and its nutritive value in 869 sampling spots. In the Altay-Dzungarian region, small ruminant herds covered up to 412 km (Mongolia) and grazed on up to nine pastures per year (China). In Mongolia, the herds' average duration of stay at an individual pasture was longer than in China, particularly in spring and autumn. Herbage allowance at the onset of a grazing period (kg dry matter per sheep unit and day) ranged from 34/17 to 91/95 (China/Mongolia). Comparing crude protein and phosphorous concentrations of herbage, in China, the highest concentrations were measured for spring and summer pastures, whereas in Mongolia, the highest concentrations were determined for autumn and winter pastures. Based on our data, we conclude that regulation of animal numbers and access to pastures seemingly maintained pasture productivity in China, especially at high altitudes. However, this policy may prohibit flexible adaptation to sudden environmental constraints. In contrast, high stocking densities and grazing of pastures before flowering of herbaceous plants negatively affected rangeland productivity in Mongolia, especially for spring and summer pastures.

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Pastoral resource access and utilization: Quantifying the spatial and temporal relationships between livestock mobility, density and biomass availability in southern Kenya

Cited by 68 publications

References 87 publications

Mobile Pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain Distribute Themselves in an Ideal Free Distribution

Mobile Pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain Distribute Themselves in an Ideal Free Distribution

Ideal Free Distributions of Mobile Pastoralists in Multiple Seasonal Grazing Areas

Spatio-temporal patterns of herbage availability and livestock movements: A cross-border analysis in the Chinese-Mongolian Altay

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