TITLE:
Effect of Development Interventions on Rangelands and Rangelands Management Strategies in Burder Landscape, 1986-2022, Wajir County, Kenya
AUTHORS:
Abdinasir Mohamed Harret, Simon Maingi, Okeyo Fred
KEYWORDS:
Indigenous Knowledge, Resource Management, Institutional Development, Rangeland Degradation, Land-Use, Land-Cover Change
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.13 No.8,
August
25,
2025
ABSTRACT: Wajir County is an arid and semi-arid area with little and unreliable rainfall. The main livelihood of her people is livestock production through pastoralism, which enables pastoralists to exploit scarce resources by practicing herd mobility, alternating the wet season and dry season grazing areas with the support of the traditional institutions. However, development interventions in the last 40 years have disrupted these traditional systems of rangeland exploitation. The study assessed the effect of development intervention on pastures and rangeland management strategies. The study employed a mixed research design method and utilized both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Supervised Classification was also utilized to determine land use/cover change from 1986 to 2022. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPPS version 25. The land use analysis grouped the land uses into four common ones in arid and semi-arid areas. The analysis had a Kappa accuracy of 77% and a user accuracy of 84%. Bare land and shrubland have increased from 101,903 and 104,780 hectares in 1986 to 112,137 and 121,817 hectares in 2022, respectively. The land under herbaceous and grassland vegetation shrubs has decreased from 110,180 and 158,088 hectares in 1986 to 89,924 and 151,008 hectares in 2022, respectively. Herbaceous Vegetation had the highest reduction in size at −18.38%, while Shrub land increased significantly at 16.26%. A kernel density assessment on the settlement distances and associated developments indicated that high-density settlements and a reduced distance between settlements resulted in high land degradation and land cover change. Correlation analysis revealed that boreholes and dams are strongly associated with the expansion of shrubland (r = 0.85, p p p p p p p p