Responding to mobility constraints: Recent shifts in resource use practices and herding strategies in the Borana pastoral system, southern Ethiopia

Wario, Hussein T.; Roba, Hassan G.; Kaufmann, Brigitte

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2015.12.005

Cited by 31 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In Botswana, Basupi et al [23] used a cognitive mapping process and a participatory GIS approach to assess the effect of land subdivision and privatization on pastoralist grazing patterns and spatial mobility. Other studies have used participatory mapping with Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia to determine how resource users perceive their surroundings and choose grazing grounds [22], especially under increased resource sharing [21]. However, despite the reported success of participatory mapping, this approach has rarely been applied in Mongolia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to monitor rangeland use and identify areas with a high risk of degradation, there exist multiple methods from across various disciplines, such as soil and vegetation monitoring [16,20], herd tracking [5,21] and participatory mapping [22,23]. This study focuses on the latter method because participatory mapping has numerous pragmatic advantages to the other methods, along with its ability to directly link individual herd management practices at the community level.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Participatory Mapping as an Approach to Identify Grazing Pressure in the Altay Mountains, Mongolia

Altmann¹,

Jordan²,

Schlecht³

2018

Sustainability

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Sustainable rangeland management is crucial for maintaining forage resources in pastoral systems, globally. However, pastoral regions are often remote and therefore data poor when it comes to resource monitoring. We tested participatory mapping as a means to rapidly assess rangeland use to identify areas with high grazing pressure. Participatory geographic information system data and herbaceous biomass production data were collected and georeferenced to establish a grazing pressure index for a summer pasture in the Mongolian Altay; simultaneously, a survey on herder perceptions and their recommended rangeland management measures was conducted. Areas with intense use, such as campsites and small and bovine ruminant grazing areas, corresponded with low biomass production and were found to be unsustainably grazed, likely prone to rangeland degradation. Participatory mapping was well received by herders and proved to be an effective method to appraise their herds' impact on rangeland resources. The process incited discussion and awareness regarding not only spatial, but also temporal aspects of rangeland management. Participatory mapping is thus a valuable tool that should be incorporated into local management initiatives in order to quickly monitor rangeland use for creating feasible management plans.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participatory Mapping as an Approach to Identify Grazing Pressure in the Altay Mountains, Mongolia

Altmann¹,

Jordan²,

Schlecht³

2018

Sustainability

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“…Ostrom's studies show that communities devise ways to govern the commons through organizing collective action to assure its survival for their needs and future generations. Many studies on nomadic pastoralism [14][15][16] refer to her paradigm on successful sharing of communal rangelands to spread risk. Indeed, nomadic 1 pastoralism is nowadays considered an epitome of sustainability [17][18][19] that unrelentingly depends on traditional institutions that have proven to be instrumental in the management of the shared natural resource base.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Hot Spots of Critical Forage Supply in Dryland Nomadic Pastoralist Areas: A Case Study for the Afar Region, Ethiopia

Sonneveld

Wesenbeeck

Keyzer

et al. 2017

Land

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This study develops a methodology to identify hot spots of critical forage supply in nomadic pastoralist areas, using the Afar Region, Ethiopia, as a special case. It addresses two main problems. First, it makes a spatially explicit assessment of fodder supply and demand extracted from a data poor environment. Fodder supply is assessed by combining rainfall-based production functions and rule-based assessment for prevailing land use. Fodder demand is based on a data consistency check of livestock statistics concerning herd size, composition and geographical distribution. Second, individual herd movements have to be evaluated jointly in concurrent migration patterns to assess local pressures on fodder resources. We, therefore, apply a transition model that relates stock levels to seasonal migration routings for all Afar sub-clans jointly so as to localize the hot spots where feed demand exceeds forage supply. Critical areas come to the fore, especially, near fringes of Highlands and in the southern part of the Afar. A sensitivity test shows that 'Baseline' scenario is close to the 'Best' but under 'Worst', the Afar region would fall into despair. We conclude that the model is a useful tool to inform policy makers on critical areas in the Afar region.

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“…Grazing orbit is a mobility area from the center of the household or a livestock enclosure where the path that animals circumnavigate from their enclosures to grazing and water resources and back to their enclosures in a grazing day [36]. Length of daily herding movement is an indicator of pastoral mobility and it measures the daily cumulative herd travel [31,[36][37][38][39]. Pastoral mobility is also measured by the distance from camp, which considers a daily maximum distance from camp or the spatial stretch of daily herding movement [27,31,40].…”

Section: Measuring the Pastoral Space And Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Production of Pastoral Space: Modeling Spatial Occupation of Grazing Land for Environmental Impact Assessment Using Structural Equation Modeling

Byambaa

Vries

2021

Land

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Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a key tool for both environmental and land management. It identifies potential adverse and unintended consequences of the projects on land use and the environment and derives possible mitigation measures to address these impacts. Calculating the volume and severity of impacts is complex and often relies on selections and simplifications. Moreover, calculating impacts associated with nomadic-pastoral (dynamic) land use is still an unresolved methodological problem. A full understanding of the patterns of dynamic land use in nomadic pastoralism is still lacking. Consequently, EIAs are currently able to predict the negative impacts associated with dynamic land use insufficiently. This article addresses this lacuna by modeling the spatial occupation of grazing land using a statistical modeling technique of structural equation modeling (SEM) and the R package lavaan for SEM, in order to explain the behavior of dynamic land use for EIA. Based on the concepts of the production of space and pastoral spatiality, we specified and tested a model of spatial occupation of grazing areas hypothesizing interrelationships between factors influencing the pastoral space using empirical data from two different ecological zones in Mongolia. The findings suggest that grazing areas, herd mobility, and herd size and composition have direct positive effects on each other. Compared to broad-scale pastoral movements, the herd size and composition significantly affect the size of grazing areas and the extent of fine-scale herding mobility. Herders occupy more pastoral space and increase their daily herding movements at their campsites when the population of livestock increases. By contrast, the herd size and composition do not considerably affect the herders’ decision to migrate for extensive grazing between their seasonal campsites. Likewise, the scale of grazing areas and fine-scale pastoral mobility do not affect significantly the broad-scale herding mobility between campsites. The broad-scale herding mobility is relatively independent of the fine-scale mobility; however, they covary. This is the first study to analyze and quantify the effects of grazing areas, herding mobility, and herd size and composition in the same study. EIA impact prediction should consider grazing areas as a dynamic space that is influenced by grazing orbits, fine and broad-scale herding movements including otor, livestock species, the number of animals as well as households at campsites.

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Responding to mobility constraints: Recent shifts in resource use practices and herding strategies in the Borana pastoral system, southern Ethiopia

Cited by 31 publications

References 40 publications

Participatory Mapping as an Approach to Identify Grazing Pressure in the Altay Mountains, Mongolia

Participatory Mapping as an Approach to Identify Grazing Pressure in the Altay Mountains, Mongolia

Identifying Hot Spots of Critical Forage Supply in Dryland Nomadic Pastoralist Areas: A Case Study for the Afar Region, Ethiopia

The Production of Pastoral Space: Modeling Spatial Occupation of Grazing Land for Environmental Impact Assessment Using Structural Equation Modeling

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