Spatial Clustering of Porcine Cysticercosis in Mbulu District, Northern Tanzania

Taenia solium is a tapeworm that causes two different disease conditions. In its adult stage, it inhabits the small intestine of human, a condition known as taeniosis, which is characterised by mild symptoms including abdominal disconfort. In the larval stage, T. solium can infect humans and various animal species, mainly pigs, causing cysticercosis. Taeniosis is acquired through consumption of inadequately cooked infected meat, while cysticercosis is acquired through ingestion of tapeworm eggs in foodstuffs contaminated with faeces from a human tapeworm carrier. Cysticercosis of human central nervous tissues (neurocysticercosis) causes serious syndromes such as epilepsy. Transmission of T. solium is facilitated by several factors such as presence of tapeworm carriers, poor sanitation and poor pig husbandry, which allow pigs to access human faeces. Nevertheless, the role of these factors in parasite transmission may vary with different cultural settings. Following an incidence and a prevalence studies in a rural area of northern Tanzania, there was a significant spatial clustering of porcine cysticerocis, suggesting focal distribution of transmission risk factors, which could be targeted for interventions. The study also revealed that despite the low sensitivity of the lingual examination method to detect porcine cysticercosis, it could highlight the potential ‘hotspots’ of the infection

From local scenarios to national maps : a participatory framework for envisioning the future of Tanzania

Tackling societal and environmental challenges requires new approaches that connect top-down global oversight with bottom-up subnational knowledge. We present a novel framework for participatory development of spatially explicit scenarios at national scale that model socioeconomic and environmental dynamics by reconciling local stakeholder perspectives and national spatial data. We illustrate results generated by this approach and evaluate its potential to contribute to a greater understanding of the relationship between development pathways and sustainability. Using the lens of land use and land cover changes, and engaging 240 stakeholders representing subnational (seven forest management zones) and the national level, we applied the framework to assess alternative development strategies in the Tanzania mainland to the year 2025, under either a business as usual or a green development scenario. In the business as usual scenario, no productivity gain is expected, cultivated land expands by ~ 2% per year (up to 88,808 km²), with large impacts on woodlands and wetlands. Despite legal protection, encroachment of natural forest occurs along reserve borders. Additional wood demand leads to degradation, i.e., loss of tree cover and biomass, up to 80,426 km² of wooded land. The alternative green economy scenario envisages decreasing degradation and deforestation with increasing productivity (+10%) and implementation of payment for ecosystem service schemes. In this scenario, cropland expands by 44,132 km² and the additional degradation is limited to 35,778 km². This scenario development framework captures perspectives and knowledge across a diverse range of stakeholders and regions. Although further effort is required to extend its applicability, improve users’ equity, and reduce costs the resulting spatial outputs can be used to inform national level planning and policy implementation associated with sustainable development, especially the REDD+ climate mitigation strategy

Tanzania's reptile biodiversity : Distribution, threats and climate change vulnerability

Assessments of biodiversity patterns and threats among African reptiles have lagged behind those of other vertebrate groups and regions. We report the first systematic assessment of the distribution, threat status, and climate change vulnerability for the reptiles of Tanzania. A total of 321 reptile species (including 90 Tanzanian endemics) were assessed using the global standard IUCN Red List methodology and 274 species were also assessed using the IUCN guidelines for climate change vulnerability. Patterns of species richness and threat assessment confirm the conservation importance of the Eastern Arc Mountains, as previously demonstrated for birds, mammals and amphibians. Lowland forests and savannah-woodland habitats also support important reptile assemblages. Protected area gap analysis shows that 116 species have less than 20% of their distribution ranges protected, among which 12 are unprotected, eight species are threatened and 54 are vulnerable to climate change. Tanzania's northern margins and drier central corridor support high numbers of climate vulnerable reptile species, together with the eastern African coastal forests and the region between Lake Victoria and Rwanda. This paper fills a major gap in our understanding of the distribution and threats facing Tanzania's reptiles, and demonstrates more broadly that the explicit integration of climate change vulnerability in Red Listing criteria may revise spatial priorities for conservation

Land cover change and carbon emissions over 100 years in an African biodiversity hotspot

Agricultural expansion has resulted in both land use and land cover change (LULCC) across the tropics. However, the spatial and temporal patterns of such change and their resulting impacts are poorly understood, particularly for the pre-satellite era. Here we quantify the LULCC history across the 33.9 million ha watershed of Tanzania's Eastern Arc Mountains, using geo-referenced and digitised historical land cover maps (dated 1908, 1923, 1949 and 2000). Our time series from this biodiversity hotspot shows that forest and savanna area both declined, by 74% (2.8 million ha) and 10% (2.9 million ha), respectively, between 1908 and 2000. This vegetation was replaced by a five-fold increase in cropland, from 1.2 million ha to 6.7 million ha. This LULCC implies a committed release of 0.9 Pg C (95% CI: 0.4-1.5) across the watershed for the same period, equivalent to 0.3 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) . This is at least three-fold higher than previous estimates from global models for the same study area. We then used the LULCC data from before and after protected area creation, as well as from areas where no protection was established, to analyse the effectiveness of legal protection on land cover change despite the underlying spatial variation in protected areas. We found that, between 1949 and 2000, forest expanded within legally protected areas, resulting in carbon uptake of 4.8 (3.8-5.7) Mg C ha(-1) , compared to a committed loss of 11.9 (7.2-16.6) Mg C ha(-1) within areas lacking such protection. Furthermore, for nine protected areas where LULCC data is available prior to and following establishment, we show that protection reduces deforestation rates by 150% relative to unprotected portions of the watershed. Our results highlight that considerable LULCC occurred prior to the satellite era, thus other data sources are required to better understand long-term land cover trends in the tropics. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Scenarios of land use and land cover change and their multiple impacts on natural capital in Tanzania

REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation, and forest degradation, plus the conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks, in developing countries) requires information on land use and land cover changes (LULCC) and carbon emissions trends from the past to the present and into the future. Here we use the results of participatory scenario development in Tanzania, to assess the potential interacting impacts on carbon stock, biodiversity and water yield of alternative scenarios where REDD+ is effectively implemented or not by 2025, the green economy (GE) and the business as usual (BAU) respectively. Under the BAU scenario, land use and land cover changes causes 296 MtC national stock loss by 2025, reduces the extent of suitable habitats for endemic and rare species, mainly in encroached protected mountain forests, and produce changes of water yields. In the GE scenario, national stock loss decreases to 133 MtC. In this scenario, consistent LULCC impacts occur within small forest patches with high carbon density, water catchment capacity and biodiversity richness. Opportunities for maximising carbon emissions reductions nationally are largely related to sustainable woodland management but also contain trade-offs with biodiversity conservation and changes in water availability

Correction to: Quantifying and understanding carbon storage and sequestration within the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, a tropical biodiversity hotspot

Abstract Upon publication of the original article [1], the authors noticed that the figure labelling for Fig. 4 in the online version was processed wrong. The top left panel should be panel a, with the panels to its right being b and c. d and e should be the panels on the lower row, and f is correct. The graphs themselves are all correct. It is simply the letter labels that are wrong

Assessment of spatial distribution and accessibility level of healthcare facilities from 1990 to 2020; a case of Morogoro municipality, Tanzania

Background: About 1.3 billion people worldwide have no reliable access to healthcare facilities and the majority of these people are residents of Developing Nations including Tanzania. The distribution of most healthcare facilities in urban areas of developing countries is characterized by location disparity. This has given rise to geographic inequality. Healthcare facilities are essential for service provision in urban areas Unfortunately these services are inadequately found in people’s settlements. The aim of this study was to assess the spatial distribution and accessibility level of healthcare facilities for a period of 30 years in an urban area. Methods: Satellite imageries incorporate supervised classification and Kappa Index of Agreement methods were used to determine urban expansion over 30 years study period. A handheld global position system was used to geo-reference the coordinates locations of all healthcare facilities. Face-to-face interview with municipality health officers and facility in-charges was conducted to know the historical background information of healthcare facilities. The distribution and accessibility level of healthcare facilities was determined by buffering analysis in the ArchGIS program incorporated with WHO standards. Results: From 1990 to 2020 built-up land increased from 3.9% to 18.9% and none built up land decreased from 96.1% to 81.9% of the total urban area of Morogoro municipality. A total number 69 of healthcare facilities location points were collected where 48 (69.6%) are dispensaries, 17 (24.6%) are health centres and 4 (5.8%) are hospitals. Out of the 69 healthcare facilities that are in existence, 79% are private institutions and 21% are government owned. Healthcare facilities accessibility decreased from 79.86% to 45.6% covering urban settlements area. Conclusion. Despite urban settlements expansion and an increase in the number of healthcare facilities still, there is decrease in the accessible urban area to healthcare facilities. It is evident from the locations of the existing facilities that proper consultation and analysis were not carried out. The new health facilities must be located in underserved areas within urban settlements. Such planned facilities are required to be located and distributed according to geographic distance and population standards per health facility

To evaluate future wetland degradation at wami ruvu river basin from 2020 to 2050 using remote sensing imagery and hybrid ca-markov model

Context and background: In current industrialized world, extremely increase of urbanization, Agriculture land expansion and climate change have led to increase of degradation of wetland in many basins and coastal area, which result to the malfunction of its ecosystem services. However, there are few studies have been conducted to analyze how the historical degradation of wetland will continue in the future especially in most of the developing countries. Goal and objectives: The overall objective of the study intents to provide an integrated method which includes GIS, remote sensing and CA-Markov Chain modelling to analyse the influence of LULC dynamic into wetland degradation. Specifically, is to use historical land use/cover maps of 2000,2010 and 2020 to develop land use simulation model to predict the spatial degradation of wetland for three decades. Methodology: In this study will use historical land use/cover maps of 2000,2010 and 2020 to develop land use simulation model to predict the spatial degradation of wetland in Wami-Ruvu river basin for coming 30 years (2020-2050) under different scenarios using land change modeler (LCM) in Idris-TerrSet. Future land use/cover map of the study area was developed using Markov chain and artificial neural network (ANN) Analysis in LCM modeler. Results: The study found of about 1209.0753Km2 (2%), 949Km2 (1.4%), 521.33Km2 (0.78%) and 213 (0.32%) of wetland was decreasing, which was equal to 1339999, 1055066, 578584and 237199 for the year 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2050 for the individual pixel values respectively, which made a half of the total simulated wetland to have been lost that is 50% of the land in the study region

Participatory geographic information systems for agricultural water management scenario development : A Tanzanian case study

One of the keys to environmental management is to understand the impact and interaction of people with natural resources as a means to improve human welfare and the consequent environmental sustainability for future generations. In terms of water management one of the on-going challenges is to assess what impact interventions in agriculture, and in particularly different irrigation strategies, will have on livelihoods and water resources in the landscape. Whilst global and national policy provide the overall vision of desired outcomes for environmental management, agricultural development and water use strategies they are often presented with local challenges to embed these policies in the reality on the ground, with different stakeholder groups. The concept that government agencies, advocacy organizations, and private citizens should work together to identify mutually acceptable solutions to environmental and water resource issues is increasing in prominence. Participatory spatial engagement techniques linked to geographic information systems (commonly termed participatory GIS (PGIS)) offers one solution to facilitate such stakeholder dialogues in an efficient and consultative manner. In the context of agricultural water management multi-scale PGIS techniques have recently been piloted as part of the 'Agricultural Water Management Solutions' project to investigate the current use and dependencies of water by small-holder farmers a watershed in Tanzania. The piloted approach then developed PGIS scenarios describing the effects on livelihoods and water resources in the watershed when introducing different management technologies. These relatively rapid PGIS multi-scale methods show promise for assessing current and possible future agriculture water management technologies in terms of their bio-physical and socio-economic impacts at the watershed scale. The paper discusses the development of the methodology in the context of improved water management decision making