Statistical characterization of frost zones: Case of tea freeze damage in the Kenyan highlands     

《International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation》2020

Frequent frost occurrences in the Kenyan highlands have had devastating effects on agricultural productivity. With inadequate management systems to mitigate the impacts, farmers have often had to bear the burden of losses resulting from frost damage. While agriculture in Kenya remains dependent on weather and climate, the agricultural economy of Kenya continues to suffer, underscoring the need for building local knowledge as basis for development of early warning systems. The current paper attempts to delineate frost zones by statistically characterizing them based on known risk factors related to topography (elevation, convexity, aspect, upslope flow length) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Through binary logistic regression, a logistic regression model was developed utilizing observation data (frost occurrence and non-occurrence) as a binary dependent variable to estimate the probability of frost occurrence. Assuming a 0.5 probability cut-off threshold between frost occurrence and non-occurrence, an overall accuracy of 81% with area under Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) Curve of 0.88 was obtained. No evidence of lack of model fit was detected. This model outperforms the currently operational model that utilizes MODIS LST alone to detect frost zones in the Kenyan tea plantations. It provides an improved method for effective delineation of frost zones by incorporating local topographic characteristics.  相似文献   

Characterization of drought in the Kerio Valley Basin,Kenya using the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index: 1960−2016     

Peter Kimosop 《Singapore journal of tropical geography》2019,40(2):239-256

The Kerio Valley basin in Kenya has undergone several periods of drought, yet drought patterns in the region are not well understood due to limited climatic data. Drought events in the region have resulted in crop failure and livestock deaths, exacerbating food shortages. In this study, the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), a multi‐scalar drought index was used to examine the onset, duration, severity, intensity, and frequency of agricultural and hydrological drought in the region. The gridded 0.5° × 0.5° climatic datasets from Climatic Research Unit for the period 1960?2016 was used for analysis. Temporal evolutions of SPEI at 6‐ and 12‐month lags were subsequently used to evaluate agricultural and hydrological drought, respectively. Additionally, the Mann‐Kendall trend test was used to test for trends in the time series. Results from the analysis show that: 1) droughts are becoming more frequent in the region, 2) drought intensities in the arid and semi‐arid lands have weakened, 3) regions west of the Kerio River have recently recorded a wetting trend, and 4) the southern and central regions of the basin are drought‐prone. Understanding the spatial and temporal patterns of drought in the basin can assist in drought preparation and mitigation planning.  相似文献   

The role of hydrothermal fluids in sedimentation in saline alkaline lakes: Evidence from Nasikie Engida,Kenya Rift Valley     

Robin W. Renaut  R. Bernhart Owen  Tim K. Lowenstein  Gijs De Cort  Emma Mcnulty  Jennifer J. Scott  Anthony Mbuthia 《Sedimentology》2021,68(1):108-134

Saline alkaline lakes that precipitate sodium carbonate evaporites are most common in volcanic terrains in semi‐arid environments. Processes that lead to trona precipitation are poorly understood compared to those in sulphate‐dominated and chloride‐dominated lake brines. Nasikie Engida (Little Magadi) in the southern Kenya Rift shows the initial stages of soda evaporite formation. This small shallow (<2 m deep; 7 km long) lake is recharged by alkaline hot springs and seasonal runoff but unlike neighbouring Lake Magadi is perennial. This study aims to understand modern sedimentary and geochemical processes in Nasikie Engida and to assess the importance of geothermal fluids in evaporite formation. Perennial hot‐spring inflow waters along the northern shoreline evaporate and become saturated with respect to nahcolite and trona, which precipitate in the southern part of the lake, up to 6 km from the hot springs. Nahcolite (NaHCO₃) forms bladed crystals that nucleate on the lake floor. Trona (Na₂CO₃·NaHCO₃·2H₂O) precipitates from more concentrated brines as rafts and as bottom‐nucleated shrubs of acicular crystals that coalesce laterally to form bedded trona. Many processes modify the fluid composition as it evolves. Silica is removed as gels and by early diagenetic reactions and diatoms. Sulphate is depleted by bacterial reduction. Potassium and chloride, of moderate concentration, remain conservative in the brine. Clastic sedimentation is relatively minor because of the predominant hydrothermal inflow. Nahcolite precipitates when and where pCO₂ is high, notably near sublacustrine spring discharge. Results from Nasikie Engida show that hot spring discharge has maintained the lake for at least 2 kyr, and that the evaporite formation is strongly influenced by local discharge of carbon dioxide. Brine evolution and evaporite deposition at Nasikie Engida help to explain conditions under which ancient sodium carbonate evaporites formed, including those in other East African rift basins, the Eocene Green River Formation (western USA), and elsewhere.  相似文献   

Enclave oil development and the rearticulation of citizenship in Turkana,Kenya: Exploring ‘crude citizenship’     

《Geoforum》2015

Turkana County, located in the arid region of northwestern Kenya, has long been imagined as backwards and unproductive. As a result, successive governments have neglected to provide adequate social services and investments in the county, leaving Turkanas to rely on humanitarian organisations for access to rights and protections traditionally associated with citizenship. Yet when oil was discovered in Turkana in 2012, the county was thrust into the international spotlight. The oil exploration and development activities that followed the oil discovery have already begun to impact life in Turkana. Accordingly, this paper focuses on changing social and political relationships in light of emergent spaces of enclave oil development in Turkana. Our analysis draws from key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and field observations carried out in Kenya between October 2014 and May 2015. Specifically, we demonstrate that the Kenyan state’s historically hands-off approach to governing this region has led some Turkanas to seek recognition, legitimization, and fulfillment for their rights from oil companies, rather than the state. We argue that this is drawing oil companies and rural communities into an uneasy citizen-state-like relationship, altering the experiences and practices of citizenship in Turkana. We conclude that while the presence of oil companies in Turkana may benefit some, it also works to the detriment of others, introducing new forms of inequality and marginalization – a process we refer to as ‘crude citizenship’.  相似文献   

Neoliberal energy transitions in the South: Kenyan experiences     

《Geoforum》2016

What is the relationship between the direction and form of an energy transition and the political economy within which it is embedded? This paper explores how the nature of (low carbon) energy transitions is strongly influenced by the process of neoliberalisation that shape energy policy in the South. We seek to understand emergent energy transitions and to advance their theorisation through an account of the political economy of energy transition in Kenya. In contrast to the often techno-managerial orientation of literatures on socio-technical transitions, we explore the political terrain upon which competing visions of energy futures and material interests collide and seek to accommodate one another. We develop a political economy account that emphasises the structural and disciplinary power of capital and global institutions to set the terms of transition. This expresses itself in both delimiting the autonomy of state actors and by reconfiguring domestic institutional and social power in ways that shape the distributional politics of transitions.  相似文献   

Mechanisms of isostatic compensation in the vicinity of the East African Rift, Kenya     

Timothy D. Bechtel  Donald W. Forsyth  Christopher J. Swain 《Geophysical Journal International》1987,90(2):445-465

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Estimating agricultural production in marginal and food insecure areas in Kenya using very high resolution remotely sensed imagery     

《Applied geography (Sevenoaks, England)》2014

Regularly monitoring the amount of food produced in food insecure, isolated, subsistence farming areas can be used to help identify households or communities who may be in need of additional food resources. Measuring seasonal food production in developing countries, particularly at a sub-national level, is complicated by lack of data. In this study we use high resolution remotely sensed data to calculate cultivated area in two different growing areas, during two different seasons in Kenya. The results of the research support the usefulness of this approach for agricultural monitoring in the developing world and suggest that monitoring cultivated area requires attention to the specific growing characteristics of an area.  相似文献   

The new politics of pastoralism: Identity,justice and global activism     

《Geoforum》2014

Concerns with the politics and practices of resource rights and access are integral to contemporary debates over environmental justice. Struggles over identity politics, especially the strategic articulation and deployment of particular identities at diverse geographical scales, have recently emerged as important mediators of justice claims in respect of resources rights, but also of recognition and procedural justice. To date, critical, multi-scalar analyses of identity-based claims for environmental justice have focused largely on the indigenous peoples’ movement. In doing so, they have failed to embrace an emergent dimension of identity-based, trans-scalar justice, namely the fledgling global pastoralists’ movement, the empirical focus for this paper. In the early years of the 21st century mobile pastoralists have begun to carve out new global spaces, through which diverse groups have attempted to negotiate common ground and forge common identities in their struggles for justice. In particular, mobile pastoralists have become increasingly visible in conservation politics and contests over land rights as they lay claim to both discursive and material ground as ‘custodians of the commons’ in an era of global climatic change. This paper draws on empirical work amongst pastoralists, NGOs and activists from Kenya, Mongolia and Spain to explore these identities, their implications for resource rights and access and the multi-scalar chains of accountability and legitimacy between global activists and their local constituents.  相似文献   

War,by Conservation     

《Geoforum》2016

In this paper I argue that there has been a critical shift towards war by conservation in which conservation, security and counter insurgency (COIN) are becoming more closely integrated. In this new phase concerns about global security constitute important underlying drivers, while biodiversity conservation is of secondary importance. This is a significant break from earlier phases of fortress conservation and war for biodiversity. In order to develop a better understanding of these shifts, this paper analyzes the existing conceptual approaches, notably environmental security which seeks to understand how resources cause or shape conflict, and political ecology approaches that focus on the struggles over access to and control over resources. However, this paper indicates the limitations of these existing debates for understanding recent shifts, which require a fresh approach. I chart the rise of the narrative I call poachers-as-terrorists, which relies on the invocation of the idea that ivory is the white gold of Jihad, a phrase which is closely associated with an Elephant Action League (EAL) report in 2012 which claimed Al Shabaab used ivory to fund its operations. This narrative is being extended and deepened by a powerful alliance of states, conservation NGOs, Private Military Companies and international organizations, such that it is shaping policies, especially in areas of US geo-strategic interest in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result conservation is becoming a core element of a global security project, with significant implications for conceptual debates and for conservation practice on the ground.  相似文献   

BOOK REVIEWS     

《The Professional geographer》1986,38(3):295-316

Book Reviewed in this article: Marine Resources of Kuwait: Their Role in the Development of Non-oil Resources . Fatimah H. Y. al -Abdul -Razzak Recollections of a Revolution: Geography as Spatial Science . Mark Billinge , Derek Gregory and Ron Martin Entre l'Eden et l'Utopie . Luc Bureau Developments in Political Geography . M. A. Busteed The Elements of Graphing Data . William S. Cleveland Rural Resource Management . Paul J. Cloke and Chris C. Park Third World Atlas . Ben Crow and Alan Thomas Exploitation, Conservation, Preservation: A Geographic Perspective on Natural Resource Use . Susan L. Cutter , Hilary Lambert Renwick, and William H. Renwick . Wine Regions of the Southern Hemisphere . Harm Jan de Blij Regional Development: Problems and Policies in Eastern and Western Europe . George Demko The Geographer at Work . Peter R. Gould Change in the Amazon Basin . John Hemming Geography Since the Second World War . R. J. Johnston and P. Claval Urbanization in China: Town and Countryside in a Developing Economy 1949–2000 A.D. , R. J. R. Kirkby Transport and Communications for Pacific Microstates: Issues in Organisation and Management . Christopher C. Kissling Fluvial Forms and Processes . David Knighton The Urban Millennium . Josef W. Konvitz Technological Transition in Cartography . Mark Stephen Monmonier Field Guide to Soils and the Environment: Applications of Soil Surveys . Gerald W. Olson Northern Australia: The Arenas of Life and Ecosystems on Half a Continent . Don Parkes A Killing Rain: The Global Threat of Acid Rain . Thomas Pawlick From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850–1931 . Donald J. Pisani Hybrid Maize Diffusion in Kenya . Franz -Michael Rundquist Warning and Response to the Mount St. Helens Eruption . Thomas F. Saarinen and James L. Sell Coastal Geomorphology in Australia . B. G. Thom Tropical Rain Forests of the Far East , 2nd ed . T. C. Whitmore The Dark Side of the Earth . Robert Muir Wood Categorical Data Analysis for Geographers and Environmental Scientists , Neil Wrigley  相似文献