Quantifying smallholder farmers’ managed land use/land cover dynamics and its drivers in contrasting agro-ecological zones of the East African Rift

Natural resource degradation tendencies in Ethiopia: a review

“…Clearing the Earth's forests on a large scale worldwide (UNEP 2012;Marques et al 2016) and particularly in Ethiopia (Kassa et al 2016;Belay and Mengistu 2019) for pasture or crop cultivation is ensuing many land damages (Demissie et al 2017;Tolessa et al 2019). Clearing of the forest has happened in Ethiopia since the earliest time (Ariti et al 2015;Mekuriaw 2017), and even become more intense within the past 30 years in the name of investors (Alemu 2017; Ketema et al 2020). Unregulated commercial land resources exploitation by the investors is causing huge forest destruction, land degradation, and disruption of wildlife resources (Kassa et al 2016;Besada 2017).…”

“…Agroforestry Agroforestry is a land use system and one of agricultural intensification practices (Ketema et al 2020) where woody perennials are planted and purposely integrated with crop cultivation and/or animal rearing on the same land management unit (Birhanu 2014;Marques et al 2016). Different types of agroforestry system do exist such as alley cropping, silvopasture, home gardens, multilayer tree gardens, multipurpose trees on croplands or shelterbelts where rows of trees are planted widely spaced in between annual crops or windbreaks and buffer strips of trees in different ways (Stavi and Lal 2015).…”

“…It improves farm household income by setting up additional products for sale or home consumption like coffee, honey, spices, fruit, bamboo, etc. (Ketema et al 2020). It can also enhance soil fertility in many situations and virtually slow down or reverse land degradation, sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and secure rural livelihoods (Kassa et al 2016).…”

“…"Land acts as an entrance ticket into the peasantry" (Shanin 1990). Access to cultivable land is the most important natural resource for rural development and is a key factor in determining the livelihood options of the rural poor in many countries including Ethiopia (Ketema et al 2020). The most important problems of rural land tenure system are inadequate access to land, inequitable distribution of land, tenure insecurity, fragmentation of holdings, inefficient use of land, and inappropriate land administration (Wabelo 2020).…”

“…Agricultural extensification to produce more food for the rapidly growing population is causing unprecedented changes in the near-natural environments like land, forest, water, grassland, and wildlife (Tolessa et al 2019). So as to use the available resources optimally and achieve sustainability, it is quite essential to have the information on existing resource use problems, management trends, and its state of occurrence (Ketema et al 2020). In doing so, proper resource conservation and management options can be determined, and sustainable resource use planning easily be framed (Berkes 2010).…”