Functions and Uses of Wetlands in Changing Savannah Environments
Final Report Abstract
Land and water shortages are currently driving the use of wetland sites in East African savannah environments. Pastoralists, traditional subsistence farmers, and commercial farms increasingly compete for limited land and water resources. Transfers between wetlands and surrounding dryland savannahs are changing both on a material level and the social level. International interests interfere with the decision-making of local resource users and changes in wetland use are frequently linked to global processes. Ecosystem collapse phenomena and social conflicts increasingly centre on wetlands. The dynamics of the coupled biophysical and socio-cultural processes are seen to determine the resilience, collapse or eventually the reorganisation of agriculturally used wetlands. This chapter describes wetland ecosystem changes and documents the rapidly unfolding political ecology of initially two contrasting wetland systems in the East African savannah. The dynamics of the coupled biophysical and socio-cultural processes are determining the resilience, regulation, collapse, or eventually the reorganisation of agriculturally used wetlands. The activities focussed initially on urban and peri-urban communities in Naivasha and on chronosequences of land use on contrasting soil types in the riparian zone. Subsequently, we show the effects of encroaching and invasive species in the direct surroundings and the wider hinterlands of the Lake Baringo wetland, where human and animal densities are high, particularly during the dry season, and where recent land use changes are very pronounced. An interdisciplinary team addressed the following questions: How has wetland use changed and which are key drivers of this change? - How do wetlands respond to change and which thresholds can monitor these dynamics? - Which factors determine the capacity of the coupled social-ecological system to absorb changes, to recover from changes or to develop into a new system state? - What are the social and the ecological drivers of species invasiveness, and what are their impacts on resource base quality, the agro-ecosystems, and the social system? - How to biophysical, social and management factors interact, how do resource users respond to changes, and at what spatial-temporal scale?
Publications
- (2013) From Cattle to Corn: Attributes of Emerging Farming Systems of Former Pastoral Nomads in East Pokot, Kenya. Society & Natural Resources 26, 1478-1490
Greiner, C., Alvarez, M., Becker, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2013.791901) - (2014) Biomass and quality changes of forages along land use and soil type gradients in the riparian zone of Lake Naivasha, Kenya. Ecological Indicators 49, 169–177
Changwony, K.D., Alvarez, M., Lanyasunya, T.P., C. Dold, C., M. Becker. M., Südekum, K-H.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.10.013) - (2014) Dodonaea viscosa (L.) Jacq. (Sapindaceae) as an encroacher species of Kenyan savannahs. South African Journal of Botany 96
Alvarez, M., Becker, M., Greiner, C., Heller, G., Vehrs, H., Kang'ethe, S.N., Malombe, I.
- (2015) Feed intake and digestibility by sheep of natural vegetation in the riparian land of lake Naivasha, Kenya. Small Ruminant Research 123, 75-82
Changwony, K.D., Lanyasunya, T.P., Südekum, K-H., Becker, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smallrumres.2014.10.013) - (2015) Soil attributes and plant production changes in a tropical littoral Wetland. J. Plant Nutr. Soil Sci. 178(4), 609-621
Dold, C. Becker, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/jpln.201400258) - (2016) Land-use changes and the invasion dynamics of shrubs in Baringo. Journal of Eastern African Studies 10(1), 111-129
Becker, M, Alvarez, M., Heller, G., Leparmarai, P., Maina, D. , Malombe, I., Bollig, M., Vehrs, H.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2016.1138664) - (2016) Recovery and germination of Prosopis juliflora seeds after ingestion by goats and cattle. Arid Land Research and Management
Alvarez, M., Leparmarai, P., Becker, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15324982.2016.1234521) - (2016) Soil attribute changes along chronosequences of agricultural land use at Lake Naivasha, Kenya. Geoderma
Dold, C; Becker, M.
