24 research outputs found
Impact of land use and land cover change on land degradation in rural semi-arid South Africa : case of the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality
DATA AVAILABILITY : The data that support the findings of this
study are available on request from the corresponding author.
The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical
restrictions.In semi-arid regions, interactions between
biophysical and socio-economic variables are complex.
Such interactions and their respective variables
significantly alter land use and land cover, degrade
landscape’s structure, and impede the efficacy of the
adopted land management interventions. This scenario
is particularly prevalent in communal land
tenure system or areas managed by a hybrid of traditional
and state led institutions. Hence, this study
sought to investigate the impacts of land use and land
cover changes (LULCCs) on land degradation (LD)
under communal rural districts, and the key drivers of
habitat fragmentation in the Greater Sekhukhune District
Municipality (GSDM), South Africa. The study
used the wet and dry season multi-temporal remotely
sensed image data, key-informant interviews, and
workshop with tribal council to determine the major
drivers of LULCC and LD. Results revealed that
mines and quarries, subsistence and commercial cultivation,
and thicket/dense bush LULCs declined significantly
during the study period. These LULCs mostly
declined in wet season, with loss in vegetation cover
highly prevalent. Specifically, the highest conversions
were from shrub/grassland to bare soil, thicket/
dense bush to shrub/grassland, and shrub/grassland to
residential, respectively. Generally, LULCC affected
vegetation productivity within the study area, with
increased negative NDVI values observed during the
dry season. The findings from key informants and
the tribal council workshop emphasized that soil erosion,
abandonment of cropland, and injudicious land
use (i.e. overgrazing and consequent bush encroachment)
have severely degraded the land. The study also established that the degrading land can be attributed
to the weakening local communal land management
system, particularly the weakening tribal councils.
The study recommends an urgent need for collaborative
(i.e. government, tribal authorities, and land
users) land management through designing relevant
multi-stakeholder LD mitigation measures.The Global Environment Facility and the Department of Science and Innovation, Republic of South Africa. Open access funding provided by University of KwaZulu-Natal.http://link.springer.com/journal/10661am2024Geography, Geoinformatics and MeteorologySDG-11:Sustainable cities and communitiesSDG-13:Climate actionSDG-15:Life on lan
Socia preferences to Mopane woodland management options: A case study from Southern Zimbabwe
No Abstract.Discovery and Innovation Vol. 19 (1&2) 2007: pp.4-1
A comparative analysis of yield gaps and water productivity on smallholder farms in Ethiopia, South Africa and Tunisia
International audienceAgriculture in developing countries will have to transform and increase production by an estimated 70% in order to meet demands by 2050. Although well-managed commercial farms offer little manoeuvring space for increasing agricultural water productivity, smallholder farms usually operate at low input costs and therefore provide ample opportunities to reduce the potential yield gap through agricultural intensification. The aim of this paper is to analyse and compare yields and water productivities obtained in field and modelling experiments in Ethiopia (maize, garlic, onion), South Africa (tomato) and Tunisia (tomato, potato, wheat). Innovative agricultural practices were introduced on smallholder farms: irrigation scheduling and NPS Zn fertilization in Ethiopia; high-yielding cultivar, drip irrigation, mulching and organic amendments in South Africa; and crop water modelling in Tunisia. In general, crop yields increased up to eight times with innovative practices compared to current conventional farming practices. Crop water productivities were fairly stable within the same experiments, but increased with innovations, indicating that intensive farming can be more environmentally sustainable than conventional farming. Intensive farming systems in a resource-rich environment (high radiation levels, relatively fertile, deep and well-drained soils), combined with technology transfer and capacity building could be seen as viable strategies to secure food for smallholders and communities in African rural areas, as well as to improve water utilization in water-scarce catchments