Water resources use in the West African region plays an essential role in the daily lives of communities. Being a region that spans across different ecozones, access to water and scarcity recurrence in some places are common. In the process, the extent of imbalance in the distribution patterns continues to fuel water insecurity and hydrological stress in the Sahel portion. This contrasts deeply with the abundance in the coastal lower South along the Gulf of Guinea. In as much as the current policy did little to ensure continual access in the zone over the years, water allotment across sectors like agriculture, industry and domestic households are on the uptick compared to the others. Even as access to potable water resources dropped in some places, meeting the stipulated global thresholds on water quality under the Millennium Development Agenda remains elusive in some of the nations. With that has come widespread pollution, degradation, depletion of the resource, limited rainfall, and the menace of drought. Hence, the problem is further compounded by several ecological (physical), and socio-economic elements located within the larger regional hydrology. This includes the changing climatic parameters, ineffective policy, rising demands, and lack of monitoring. Notwithstanding these challenges, very little has been done in the literature to analyze the issues in water resources use across the study area using the mix scale model. For that, this paper will fill that void by focusing on the challenges in a select group of countries in West Africa. Emphasis is on the issues, trends, impacts, and factors. For the purposes of analysis, the paper uses mix scale methods connected to the techniques of GIS and descriptive statistics. In applying the techniques, the results show widespread use of water and changes, the appearance of degradation, pollution, and water stress due to a set of socio-economic and physical elements. To remedy the situation, the paper proffered some solutions ranging from the education of the public on water use, the enactment of efficient policy, periodic monitoring, and the design of a regional water management information system.
Rangelands in the Western highlands has notably witnessed change in vegetation cover and vegetation composition largely accounted for by increasing growth of invasive weeds in grasslands. Dominant native grass suitable for livestock grazing are Hyparrhenias and Sporobolus. Very noticeable invasive plants like Pteridium aquililium adapts to higher elevations while Chromolaena odorata invades lowlands. Rangelands constitute an important resource base with diverse functions for livelihood and food security. There is a coalesce centenary history of land use for grazing spanning from pastoral nomadism in the past to present settled pastoralism with open public and communal grazing sites with occasional farmer grazier conflicts. The rational for this study is that limited information is available on the impact of weeds on rangeland degradation. Weed invasions are facilitated by landuse-grazing/fire and bioclimatic factors and changes vegetation composition. This study focused on evaluating vegetation composition in rangelands along selected transect, represented different in cross-sections, cutting across valleys, foothills, slopes, hill summits and plateaus in four topographic units. Field results reveal an association with altitudinal zonation with Chromolaena odorata highly invasive below 1200m in low altitude areas, a mix of Chromolaena odorata and Pteridium aquililium in mid altitude areas between 1200m-1550m and Pteridium aquililium in highlands above 1500m. Bioclimatic factors greatly determine susceptibility to spread and other risk factors (roads, rivers, fragmentation) determined patch size and density. Weed patch density was highest closest to roads as risk factors. Over 56% of rangelands are infested with weeds varying from dense (62%), moderate (23%) to light (15%). According to altitude, weed presence in grass composition stood at 13% (zone one: 300-1000m), 22% (zone two: 1000-1500m) and 65% (zone three: above 1500m). The magnitude and impacts are undoubted and landscape change is therefore axed around land use with variables like grazing and fire accelerating vegetation change.
Unregulated human activities have resulted in massive degradation and eventual loss of wetlands despite their importance in providing various ecosystem services and habitat to important species of fauna and flora. In Murang’a County, Kenya, wetland degradation has increased at an alarming rate since the 1980s, with no data on their degradation status and challenges facing their conservation. This study aimed to examine the trend of wetland degradation and the main challenges impacting their conservation in Murang’a County between 1986 and 2018. The challenges were identified in a stakeholder workshop involving 39 key stakeholders and ranked in order of importance using the pair-wise ranking technique. Trends in wetland degradation status were assessed through analysis of land use maps obtained from Landsat images of 1986, 2001, and 2018. The most critical challenges affecting the conservation and management of wetlands in the County were inadequate legislation followed by poor planning, lack of community empowerment, scarce resources, corruption, encroachment, and pollution. Correlation analysis between wetland and water areas showed a significant but negative relationship at (P<0.01), indicating that decreasing wetland areas resulted in a significant reduction of water areas. The wetland area in the County decreased by about 48% between 2001 and 2018 and to arrest this trend of declining wetland area, the stakeholders recommended the amalgamation of all laws and policies touching on conservation and management of wetlands in the County. Further, there is a need for community involvement and empowerment to create awareness of the roles of wetlands for their well-being.
