Assessing the impacts of watershed interventions using ground data and remote sensing: a case study in Ethiopia

Quantifying the temporal and spatial changes due to watershed interventions is important for assessing the effectiveness of natural resource management practices on vegetative cover and sediment management. This study assessed the performance of natural resource management in a target site (Aba Gerima) and compared the collateral impacts on neighbouring watersheds in Ethiopia in terms of land-use land-cover change. Changes in the extent of cropland, grassland and shrubland were assessed in the target watershed and the non-treated neighbouring watersheds using temporal satellite imagery. In addition, ground monitoring was applied to quantify the impacts on sediment accumulation, fodder biomass and vegetative cover intensity. The study findings showed substantial changes over the study period: mainly, a change from degraded and barren land to restored vegetation in the target watershed, but a continued trend of land-use change from perennial vegetation to cropland in the neighbouring untreated watersheds. There was a decrease in the rate of conversion of vegetative land cover to cropland in the target watershed, and significant on-site changes in sediment retention, fodder productivity and vegetation intensity. The study findings demonstrate a link between management interventions and improvement in soil and vegetation ecosystem functions. These results not only indicate that watershed-level interventions improve on-site soil and water environmental services but also underline the role of community managed land-use regulations in reducing pressure on natural land-use systems and thereby serve the major goal of up-scaling sustainable land management

Global, regional, and national cancer incidence, mortality, years of life lost, years lived with disability, and disability-Adjusted life-years for 29 cancer groups, 1990 to 2017 : A systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study

Importance: Cancer and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are now widely recognized as a threat to global development. The latest United Nations high-level meeting on NCDs reaffirmed this observation and also highlighted the slow progress in meeting the 2011 Political Declaration on the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases and the third Sustainable Development Goal. Lack of situational analyses, priority setting, and budgeting have been identified as major obstacles in achieving these goals. All of these have in common that they require information on the local cancer epidemiology. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study is uniquely poised to provide these crucial data. Objective: To describe cancer burden for 29 cancer groups in 195 countries from 1990 through 2017 to provide data needed for cancer control planning. Evidence Review: We used the GBD study estimation methods to describe cancer incidence, mortality, years lived with disability, years of life lost, and disability-Adjusted life-years (DALYs). Results are presented at the national level as well as by Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income, educational attainment, and total fertility rate. We also analyzed the influence of the epidemiological vs the demographic transition on cancer incidence. Findings: In 2017, there were 24.5 million incident cancer cases worldwide (16.8 million without nonmelanoma skin cancer [NMSC]) and 9.6 million cancer deaths. The majority of cancer DALYs came from years of life lost (97%), and only 3% came from years lived with disability. The odds of developing cancer were the lowest in the low SDI quintile (1 in 7) and the highest in the high SDI quintile (1 in 2) for both sexes. In 2017, the most common incident cancers in men were NMSC (4.3 million incident cases); tracheal, bronchus, and lung (TBL) cancer (1.5 million incident cases); and prostate cancer (1.3 million incident cases). The most common causes of cancer deaths and DALYs for men were TBL cancer (1.3 million deaths and 28.4 million DALYs), liver cancer (572000 deaths and 15.2 million DALYs), and stomach cancer (542000 deaths and 12.2 million DALYs). For women in 2017, the most common incident cancers were NMSC (3.3 million incident cases), breast cancer (1.9 million incident cases), and colorectal cancer (819000 incident cases). The leading causes of cancer deaths and DALYs for women were breast cancer (601000 deaths and 17.4 million DALYs), TBL cancer (596000 deaths and 12.6 million DALYs), and colorectal cancer (414000 deaths and 8.3 million DALYs). Conclusions and Relevance: The national epidemiological profiles of cancer burden in the GBD study show large heterogeneities, which are a reflection of different exposures to risk factors, economic settings, lifestyles, and access to care and screening. The GBD study can be used by policy makers and other stakeholders to develop and improve national and local cancer control in order to achieve the global targets and improve equity in cancer care. © 2019 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017

A double burden of malnutrition occurs when individuals, household members or communities experience both undernutrition and overweight. Here, we show geospatial estimates of overweight and wasting prevalence among children under 5 years of age in 105 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from 2000 to 2017 and aggregate these to policy-relevant administrative units. Wasting decreased overall across LMICs between 2000 and 2017, from 8.4% (62.3 (55.1–70.8) million) to 6.4% (58.3 (47.6–70.7) million), but is predicted to remain above the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025. Prevalence of overweight increased from 5.2% (30 (22.8–38.5) million) in 2000 to 6.0% (55.5 (44.8–67.9) million) children aged under 5 years in 2017. Areas most affected by double burden of malnutrition were located in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Our estimates provide a new perspective to researchers, policy makers and public health agencies in their efforts to address this global childhood syndemic

Forest landscape restoration in Ethiopia: Progress and challenges

The government of Ethiopia has made an ambitious plan of building a carbon-neutral and middle-income economy by 2030. In 2016, the country pledged to restore 15 million hectares of degraded landscapes as part of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR 100). A total of three major forest landscape restoration (FLR) initiatives have been used to achieve this target: participatory forest management (PFM) to engage communities in sustainably managing natural forests; area enclosures/exclosures (AEs) to socially fence hillsides and degraded communal lands and allow these areas regain their productive potential; and sustainable land management program and the Green Legacy Initiative (SLM-GLI) that aim at conserving soil and water resources and planting seedlings to increase forest cover. After describing these FLR initiatives, this study evaluated their impacts on land use land cover change over time and assessed them against the six FLR principles by selecting nationally relevant criteria under each principle. The results showed that the FLR initiatives were rated rather low in terms of focusing on and managing landscapes for multiple benefits, in participation and benefits of stakeholders, in ownership and use rights, in employing approaches tailored to the local context, and in managing adaptively for long-term resilience. Concerning impacts, varying trends were observed for different areas, time periods, and restoration types. Recognizing and mitigating the limitations of these initiatives together with addressing site-specific drivers will improve the conservation and livelihood outcomes of FLR initiatives in Ethiopia. It is hoped that the findings of the study will inform FLR practitioners in other countries on the practical use of FLR principles in assessing the impacts of FLR initiatives

Extent and distribution of surface soil acidity in the rainfed areas of Ethiopia

The soil acidity level is a key soil characteristic that determines soil nutrient availability, soil microbial activities, and crop growth. This study was carried out to predict the extent and severity of soil acidity based on 109,704 soil pH samples collected from soil laboratories and compiled from various studies. Rainfall, altitude, slope gradient, soil, and land cover were considered to generate multivariate interpolated soil pH surface. The performance of the co–kriging model was found to be satisfactory with a standard error of 0.77, root mean square error of 0.51, and R2 of 0.74. The model estimates showed that 47% of the Country's total area and 45% of the rainfed areas are acidic (pH < 6.5). Out of the total area of the Country, 3.7% (42,264 km2) is found to be extreme to strong acidic (pH < 5.5), 20.7% (236,724 km2) is moderate acidic (5.6 < pH < 6.0), and 22.5% (257,290 km2) is slight acidic (6.0 < pH < 6.5), whereas the respective coverage in the rainfed agricultural areas is found to be 12% (80,732 km2), 18% (120,500 km2), and 14.6% (97,202 km2). As informed by the model results, integrated acid soil management efforts should be given a priority to severe soil acidity areas of western, central, northwestern, and southern parts of the Country. Thus, appropriate integrated land management techniques that enable to reduce soil acidity and halt land degradation should be initiated, informed by the map produced. Regularly updating the extent and distribution of surface and sub-surface soil acidity is recommended in future studies

Enhanced Soil Moisture Retrieval through Integrating Satellite Data with Pedotransfer Functions in a Complex Landscape of Ethiopia

Remotely sensed soil moisture products potentially provide a valuable resource for monitoring agricultural drought and assessing food security. The agriculture dominated countries of Eastern Africa experience high inter-annual variability of rainfall, but the monitoring and assessment of the predominantly rainfed agriculture systems is hindered by an absence of ground-based observations. This study evaluates the accuracy of three soil moisture products: ASCAT SWI 12.5 km, SMAP soil moisture data 9 km (SPL3SMP_E), and enhanced surface soil moisture map derived through integrating ASCAT SWI and Pedotransfer Functions (PTFs) (ASCAT_PTF_SM), in Ethiopia, through comparison with in situ-observed soil moisture datasets. Additionally, a new water retention PTF, developed for Ethiopian soils, is integrated with a high-resolution soil property dataset to enhance the spatial resolution of the soil moisture product. The results show that the new integrated dataset performs better in terms of unbiased root mean square error (ubRMSE = 0.0398 m3/m3) and bias (0.0222 m3/m3) in comparison with ASCAT SWI 12.5 km (ubRMSE = 0.0.0771 m3/m3, bias = 0.1065 m3/m3). SMAP is found to have limitations during the wet season, overestimating soil moisture. The finer spatial resolution of the data allows for a better depiction of heterogeneity of soil moisture across the landscape and can be used to identify water-related issues and improve hydrological models for agricultural water management

Determining the groundwater potential for agricultural use in Ethiopian Highlands [Abstract only]

The Ethiopian government has declared the Lake Tana - Beles region to be a growth corridor and irrigation development is one of the priorities. Since the dry season river flow is limited, groundwater has the greatest potential for increasing irrigation in the near future. The main drawback is lack of information on sustainable groundwater use and specifically the ground water potential. Therefore the objective of this research is to calculate the annual groundwater recharge. The study was conducted in Robit-Bata, an experimental watershed of 911 ha, located at the south-eastern edge of Lake Tana. Farmers have excavated more than 300 hand dug wells for irrigation use from which, we used 50 wells for water table fluctuation observations for one year starting from April, 2014. Daily Precipitation was recorded for the same period. The annual recharge was estimated using the water – level fluctuation method. Specific yield was defined as the difference of porosity and field capacity of the subsurface formation. The annual average areal groundwater recharge was 640 mm/year, which is 41% of the rainfall and ranged from 50mm to 390mm per week for the various locations in the watershed. The greatest recharge amounts were found in the plains at the foot of the hills and river course areas consisting mostly weathered basalt rock. At those locations the groundwater rose steadily during the rainy monsoon phase. Smaller amount of recharge occurred both near the top of the hills with tough rock formation and in the, flat areas near to stream with sandy and clay deposits and groundwater at, shallow well depth. Our study indicates that the current use of the groundwater seems sustainable. Further research is required for optimized utilization of the limited groundwater resources for irrigation development to meet the food security of the community

Adaptation of the SCS [Soil Conservation Service] runoff equation for a (Sub) humid monsoon climate

The Soil Conservation Service Runoff equation was developed and tested for the temperate climate in the United States. Application to the monsoon climates has been only partially successful. The objective to adapt the SCS equation to a monsoon climate equation is to predict watershed runoff. The adaptation is based on the fact that in many humid areas the main mechanism for direct runoff is saturation excess and in monsoon climates the contributing area expands as a function of the cumulative effective rainfall ( Pe). This then translate in smaller watershed storage (S) in the equation. When estimating runoff contributing area within a watershed and assessing the runoff mechanisms, we have used the original concept of SCS-CN approach in a 113 ha Anjeni and 113ha Maybar Watersheds in the headwaters of the Blue Nile Basin, North Ethiopian highland. Analysis was done at daily, weekly and biweekly base using nine years of hydrological data (1988-97) by classifying the rainfall seasons in to six based on the seasonal cumulative of effective rainfall (Pe). The initial abstraction (Ia) was taken to be equal to the evapotranspiration loss (E) computed by Thornthwaite-Mather water balance method in replacement of the 20% of the potential storage (S). Effective rainfall (Pe) is the difference of total rainfall and Ia. The model performed more as the seasonal cumulative Pe is increased indicating that runoff responses occurred as the watershed saturated. The proportion of runoff contributing area (Af) increased linearly until the cumulative Pe up to nearly 500mm and then the watershed reaches in equilibrium for addition increase of Pe, which is in line with the concept of partial source area hydrology