RP-Department of Geography

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Browsing RP-Department of Geography by Author "Bamutaze, Y."

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    Assessing the impact of climate change and climate variability on agricultural productivity in selected climatological zones of Uganda: an overview.
    (RUFORUM, 2010-09) Nabasirye, M.; Tenywa, M. M.; Bamutaze, Y.; Shisanya, C.A.; Nsengiyunva, M. M.
    Climate change and climate variability are a major threat to livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The IPCC report of 2007 indicates that SSA is the most vulnerable region to climate change and climate variability due to the weak economies and lack of adaptive capacity. If climate change and variability are not timely addressed, they are likely to worsen the poverty levels and further weaken the economies of the region. The poor agrobased communities in the dryland areas are particularly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change and climate variability. There is therefore urgent need for concerted efforts to design appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategies to buffer communities in these ecologically sensitive areas against climate change and climate variability. Designing mitigation and adaptation strategies requires information and knowledge on the impact of climate change on the targeted sites. To-date, the impact of climate change and variability on the agricultural productivity is not well understood and the climate change threat remains largely unresolved. Most of the available information has been obtained from Global Circulation Models (GCM) but these models are inadequate to spatially differentiate the diverse ecosystems and adaptive capacities. The thrust of this study is to improve our understanding of climate change and climate variability impacts on agricultural productivity in selected climatologically contrasting districts of Uganda. The multidisciplinary project adopts diverse methods including modelling, experimentation, participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and household interviews. The study will provide a niche for improved strategies. Since the action area is a dryland, it is also envisaged that the results and recommendations from the study will potentially be replicable in other dryland areas and communities of SSA.
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    Effects of land use practices on livelihoods in the transboundary sub - catchments of the Lake Victoria Basin
    (African Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, 2008-10) Obando, Makalle, Joy; Albinus, M. P.; Bamutaze, Y.
    The Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) is experiencing changes in land use due to both anthropogenic and natural drivers which are critical to the sustainability of the resources and livelihoods of the communities. Indeed the resultant land use practices and decisions made by the communities on the use of the land rely on the changes in the basin. This paper presents an analysis of the land use practices in the Lake Victoria Basin using two sub-catchments of Mara River (Tanzania) and Sio River (Kenya-Uganda) as case studies. Collection of mainly socio-economic and environmental data involved in-depth interviews of 679 respondents from the midstream and downstream zones of the sub-catchments. The findings reveal conspicuous changes in community livelihoods as a result of expansion of cultivation, overgrazing on the river banks, increased use of wetlands areas, the disappearance and extreme fragmentation of forest, bush land and appearance and the diminishing of settlements. The hitherto common resources have become scarce forcing farmers to try intensifying and diversifying their farm production with little success due to poor traditional farming practices. Although local initiatives are leading to change, there is need for integrated approaches of indigenous knowledge, technical agricultural research, economic analysis, and policy studies and reforms.
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    Estimation of the aboveground biomass in the trans-boundary River Sio Sub-catchment in Uganda
    (University of Port Harcourt, 2010-06) Obando, Joy Apiyo; Barasa, B.; Majaliwa, M.G.J.; Lwasa, S.; Bamutaze, Y.
    The enormous land cover in Uganda is rapidly being depleted or encroached. To examine this, the study aimed at estimating the above-ground biomass in River Sio sub-catchment in Uganda. The study utilized an ortho-rectified Landsat TM/ETM image of 2004 which was classified using NDVI classification system for the aboveground biomass assessment in ILWIS 3.3 software. A total of 42 homogenous sampling sites were identified for biomass estimation along six laid transects measuring 500m long. The seven randomly selected sampling plots measured 50m X 50 m. The classification showed that Bushlands (0.17), wetlands (0.03) and small scale farming (0.29-0.03) had relatively more medium and low biomass ranges compared to grasslands (-0.41/-0.29) which mainly comprised of bare land. The above ground biomass was relatively higher in bushlands (4.9 tons) and wetlands (4.7 tons) compared to non-uniform small scale farming (farmlands) with 3.9 tons and grasslands with 1.6 tons. The variation in biomass shows that the sub-catchment requires an urgent need for land use/cover planning and management to prevent further degradation of land cover.
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    Magnitude and transition potential of land-use/cover changes in the trans-boundary river Sio catchment using remote sensing and GIS
    (Taylor & Francis, 2011-03) Barasaa, B.; Majaliwa, J.G.M.; Lwasa, S.; Obando, Joy Apiyo; Bamutaze, Y.
    The multiplicity of land-use/cover changes in reducing the areas covered by vegetation is of growing concern in Uganda today. Consequently, the study intended to determine the magnitude and transition potential of land-use/cover changes in a trans-boundary river Sio catchment. The magnitude of land-use/cover changes was determined by an application of unsupervised image classification on the ortho-rectified Landsat TM/ETM images of 1986 and 2000 using ILWIS 3.3 software; whereas an ArcGIS 9.2-based Land Change Modeler was used for both change analysis and transition potential modeling. The results showed that in the period of 1986 to 2000, wetlands and bushlands largely reduced by 21% and 5%, respectively, whereas small-scale farming and grasslands increased by 14% and 12%, respectively. The multilayer perceptron attained an accuracy of 97.03%, which is a higher percentage for the possible occurrences of land-use/cover changes in Sio catchment. The major drivers of land-use/cover changes are land ownership and household size. The study therefore recommends that the awareness of land-use/cover changes is extremely important for the Sio catchment’s planning and management of the natural resources.