Land-use changes and the invasion dynamics of shrubs in Baringo

Becker, M.; Álvarez, Miguel; Heller, Gereon; Leparmarai, Paul; Maina, Damaris; Malombe, Itambo; Bollig, Michael; Vehrs, Hauke

doi:10.4324/9781315267647-6

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Building on decades of fieldwork in the area, on the systematic classification of satellite images, on data from interdisciplinary field research and on historical ecology, we are present a comprehensive analysis of LULCCs covering a period of 30 years and beyond. Our ethnographic data stretch from the late 1980s to the present (Bollig et al 2014;) and include recurrent interdisciplinary field campaigns with agronomists and botanists (Bollig and Schulte 1999;Greiner et al 2013;Becker et al 2016;Vehrs and Heller 2017). Our analysis also builds on studies based on remote sensing, which include time series of Landsat images for the period 1985 to 2015 (Obermaier 2013;Basukala et al 2019a, b).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land-use and Land-cover Changes in Pastoral Drylands: Long-term Dynamics, Economic Change, and Shifting Socioecological Frontiers in Baringo, Kenya

2021

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The ongoing fragmentation of pastoral drylands is a matter of concern throughout Africa. Using the example of rangelands in northern Baringo County, Kenya, that were under uniform pastoral use until the late twentieth century, we trace land-use and land-cover changes (LULCCs) since the 1980s. Based on ethnographic, historical, and remote sensing data, we show how bush encroachment and dryland farming have led to the increasing modification and conversion of formerly open rangelands and the diversification of livelihoods. These LULCC dynamics are related to and driven not only by internal processes of socioeconomic change (e.g., sedentarization, changing rangeland management practices, growing markets for small stock, increasing stratification and cultural differentiation) but also by ecological processes such as wildlife defaunation and ecological invasions. Based on our findings, we suggest that a socioecological approach to Kopytoff’s notion of the internal African frontier can be helpful in framing these LULCC-related dynamics.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land-use and Land-cover Changes in Pastoral Drylands: Long-term Dynamics, Economic Change, and Shifting Socioecological Frontiers in Baringo, Kenya

2021

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“…The Lake Baringo basin lies immediately to the west of the Laikipia Plateau, extending over 6200 km 2 along the Rift Valley, and is characterised by bare soils, severe erosion, and invasive plants (Bessems et al 2008;Becker et al 2016). Though herding has been the dominant subsistence strategy for the past 3000 years, the intensity of pastoral occupation has fluctuated; this is apparent in the large number of sites associated with Pastoral Neolithic Turkwel ceramics (c. 200-1100 AD) coeval with a more arid period in the Lake Bogoria basin, and an almost complete lack of Pastoral Iron Age sites (c. 900-1700 AD) during the wetter Little Ice Age (c. 1250-1750) (Ashley et al 2004;De Cort et al 2013;Petek 2018).…”

Section: Case Study 2: Baringomentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical Ecologies of Pastoralist Overgrazing in Kenya: Long-Term Perspectives on Cause and Effect

et al. 2019

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The spectre of 'overgrazing' looms large in historical and political narratives of ecological degradation in savannah ecosystems. While pastoral exploitation is a conspicuous driver of landscape variability and modification, assumptions that such change is inevitable or necessarily negative deserve to be continuously evaluated and challenged. With reference to three case studies from Kenyathe Laikipia Plateau, the Lake Baringo basin, and the Amboseli ecosystemwe argue that the impacts of pastoralism are contingent on the diachronic interactions of locally specific environmental, political, and cultural conditions. The impacts of the compression of rangelands and restrictions on herd mobility driven by misguided conservation and economic policies are emphasised over outdated notions of pastoralist inefficiency. We review the application of 'overgrazing' in interpretations of the archaeological record and assess its relevance for how we interpret past socio-environmental dynamics. Any discussion of overgrazing, or any form of human-environment interaction, must acknowledge spatio-temporal context and account for historical variability in landscape ontogenies.

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“…Vegetation today is characterised by open bushland/woodland savannah dominated by Acacia spp. and increasingly by invasive forbs and shrubs (Becker et al 2016). Much of the land is bare causing severe sheet and gully erosion, making land degradation the dominant topic of current research (e.g.…”

Section: Baringo Before the Ilchamusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnogenesis and surplus food production: communitas and identity building among nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ilchamus, Lake Baringo, Kenya

Petek

Lane

2017

World Archaeology

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Most archaeological discussions of surplus production tend to focus either on its role in the emergence and maintenance of social complexity (whether among hunter-gatherers, farming communities or incipient states), or on the enabling properties of surplus as a basis for technological advances and aesthetic elaboration. Here, we offer a rather different perspective on surplus as an initiator of communitas and driver of ethnogenesis following a period of intense socio-ecological stress, environmental degradation and localised demographic decline during the nineteenth century. The particular case study concerns the Maa-language speaking Ilchamus community who currently occupy areas around the southern end of Lake Baringo in the Central Rift Valley, Kenya. Drawing on a combination of new archaeological evidence, oral accounts and archival sources, the paper details the processes whereby destitute groups were drawn together into acts of surplus food production, initially of grain via the implementation of a system of irrigated agriculture and subsequently of cattle through the mobilisation of kinship and related ties. In so doing, disparate older identities were abandoned or transformed and a different, unifying ethnicity-Ilchamus-emerged based on a new moral economy of shared prosperity.

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Land-use changes and the invasion dynamics of shrubs in Baringo

Cited by 8 publications

References 1 publication

Land-use and Land-cover Changes in Pastoral Drylands: Long-term Dynamics, Economic Change, and Shifting Socioecological Frontiers in Baringo, Kenya

Land-use and Land-cover Changes in Pastoral Drylands: Long-term Dynamics, Economic Change, and Shifting Socioecological Frontiers in Baringo, Kenya

Historical Ecologies of Pastoralist Overgrazing in Kenya: Long-Term Perspectives on Cause and Effect

Ethnogenesis and surplus food production: communitas and identity building among nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ilchamus, Lake Baringo, Kenya

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