TY - CONF
T1 - Food security and water availability in data-poor regions: Towards optimizing land use and ecosystem services
AU - Vogels, M.F.A.
AU - Addink, E.A.
AU - Sterk, G.
AU - de Jong, S.M.
PY - 2015/6/25
Y1 - 2015/6/25
N2 - In the Horn of Africa both the economy and the population are growing rapidly, which results in changes in land use. For instance in Ethiopia, forests and grazing land have been converted into crop land, affecting both land degradation and water availability. Conversion of vegetated land to nearly bare agricultural crop land results in less infiltration and more surface runoff. As a result, soil erosion increases and the base flow of rivers lowers, threatening food supply and access to water. Further land degradation may result from anticipated climate change within the next decades, affecting both annual precipitation and its seasonality. Optimizing land use patterns could reduce these effects, by e.g. creating smart arrangements of agricultural fields and natural vegetation. The aim of this project is to study the influence of land use changes under changing precipitation regimes on hydrology and land degradation in the Tikur Woha catchment in Ethiopia Central Rift. A pilot study in this catchment shows some major land use changes between 1986 and 2011 of which the decline in natural forest and the increase in large scale agricultural farming are the most pronounced. Combined with the characteristic erosion rates of the different land use types the results indicate an increase in local erosion rates in the recent 2011 spatial land use distribution compared to 1986. Currently, the work of land‐use managers is frustrated by the absence of reliable information on current land-use and land-degradation status. When the land‐use managers provide an overview of the required land use to support the population, the spatial distribution can be optimized by taking the topography, hydrology, and land degradation into account. This land-use optimization procedure will be assessed in terms of hydrology and soil erosion magnitude by using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). A combination of multi-temporal remote-sensing data on land use and land cover, existing data sets of meteorology, hydrology and soils, and field data on land degradation will be input into the SWAT model. This modelling will enhance our understanding of the interactions between land-use changes and hydrology and soil erosion. The final product will be a map that shows local land-and-water managers the optimal spatial arrangement of different land use categories. The conference presentation will show an outline of this research combined with the preliminary results of the pilot study. This project will demonstrate a service that will optimize water availability and minimize land degradation while meeting the requirements of a growing population and considering future changes in precipitation patterns.
AB - In the Horn of Africa both the economy and the population are growing rapidly, which results in changes in land use. For instance in Ethiopia, forests and grazing land have been converted into crop land, affecting both land degradation and water availability. Conversion of vegetated land to nearly bare agricultural crop land results in less infiltration and more surface runoff. As a result, soil erosion increases and the base flow of rivers lowers, threatening food supply and access to water. Further land degradation may result from anticipated climate change within the next decades, affecting both annual precipitation and its seasonality. Optimizing land use patterns could reduce these effects, by e.g. creating smart arrangements of agricultural fields and natural vegetation. The aim of this project is to study the influence of land use changes under changing precipitation regimes on hydrology and land degradation in the Tikur Woha catchment in Ethiopia Central Rift. A pilot study in this catchment shows some major land use changes between 1986 and 2011 of which the decline in natural forest and the increase in large scale agricultural farming are the most pronounced. Combined with the characteristic erosion rates of the different land use types the results indicate an increase in local erosion rates in the recent 2011 spatial land use distribution compared to 1986. Currently, the work of land‐use managers is frustrated by the absence of reliable information on current land-use and land-degradation status. When the land‐use managers provide an overview of the required land use to support the population, the spatial distribution can be optimized by taking the topography, hydrology, and land degradation into account. This land-use optimization procedure will be assessed in terms of hydrology and soil erosion magnitude by using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). A combination of multi-temporal remote-sensing data on land use and land cover, existing data sets of meteorology, hydrology and soils, and field data on land degradation will be input into the SWAT model. This modelling will enhance our understanding of the interactions between land-use changes and hydrology and soil erosion. The final product will be a map that shows local land-and-water managers the optimal spatial arrangement of different land use categories. The conference presentation will show an outline of this research combined with the preliminary results of the pilot study. This project will demonstrate a service that will optimize water availability and minimize land degradation while meeting the requirements of a growing population and considering future changes in precipitation patterns.
M3 - Abstract
ER -