Search

This paper investigates how Borana pastoralists of southern Ethiopia have adapted resource use and livestock mobility practices amid multiple constraints including rising population, loss of rangeland to other pastoral communities and changing access rights, among others. This study uses an innovative multi-scalar methodology to understand how herders' grazing management decisions are made within a context of communal regulations governing access to resources. Grazing itinaries specifying the grazing units used during the past year were established for 91 cattle herds and daily mobility was recorded through 12 months of GPS data monitoring of three herds in three zones within the Borana rangelands. The results revealed communal reorganisation of the grazing areas into units with designated periods of access. Despite the reorganization, herd mobility is severely limited, but to different degrees. In the zones facing most constraints, herd mobility is restricted to the grazing areas within proximity of the respective herder's settlement. However in all the areas, movement outside the herd owners' zone of residence is only practiced as escape mobility, ‘ baqa’ (to flee); instead of the formerly common ‘ godanna’ (to move). These constraints impede fundamental herd mobility needed to meet livestock nutrient requirements, which then affects resilience of the pastoral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the highlands of northern Ethiopia, degraded hillslopes are closed for grazing and agriculture for environmental rehabilitation. In order to assess the effect of these exclosures on water balances, a correct assessment of evapotranspiration is needed. A common method for calculating evapotranspiration employs the reference evapotranspiration in combination with a crop coefficient. However, for natural vegetation, these crop coefficients are not readily available. Therefore, the objective of this study was to derive crop coefficients for semiarid natural vegetation using two different approaches. The crop coefficients were assessed with the dual crop coefficient approach as outlined in the FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper n°56 and compared with crop coefficients derived from a simple soil water balance. A good agreement between both methods was found. The mid-season crop coefficients ranged from 0.50 to 0.85 for open vegetation with small shrubs and from 0.85 to 0.95 for well developed shrubland. Vegetation with a closed tree canopy was characterized by a mid-season crop coefficient between 0.95 and 1.1. Additionally, a significant logarithmic relation between vegetative soil cover and crop coefficient was found. Using this relation, crop coefficients can be easily derived for semiarid shrub savannahs in similar environments and used for the calculation of evapotranspiration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]