Month: August 2018

The land availability layer has been produced. I thought it is important to share that this study was conducted using ESRI ArcGIS 10.4 (ESRI, Redlands, CA) and R software (R Core Team, 2017) and variables were mapped at a spatial resolution of 1 kilometre. This map shows available land for feeds and forage production in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The red represent areas with no or less land available for feeds and forage production. Therefore, farmers in these areas are less likely to adopt feed interventions which require the use of more land.The green represent areas with available land for forage production and further implies that farmers in these areas are most likely to find feed options which require land attractive.

After settling on the proxy indicators presented on the previous mapping update, I looked for organisations which were in position to provide the proxy indicator's data. The purpose of this post is to share the sources which provided the data used to produce the four layers or maps.

Four maps
- Feed quantity
- Seasonal feed scarcity
- Land availability
- Water availability

In this study, feed quantity was defined as the available feed quantity per animal. Seasonal feed scarcity was defined as the number of months with feed quantity less than the requirements of one tropical livestock unit (TLU). Therefore, the following sources provided data which was used to produce the feed quantity and Seasonal feed scarcity maps:

• Copernicus Global Land Services provided Net Primary Productivity (Dry Matter Productivity) data from 2008 to 2010 and Land cover data from 2015 to 2016.

• International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) Datasets Portal provided livestock production systems which was used to extract the mixed farming system data of East Africa.

• Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provided a pasture density layer which was used to calculate the fraction of dry matter production used as livestock feed.

• Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) provided Global Cattle Density data which was used to determine annual feed production per animal.

Land availability was defined as the cropland area available per person. The following sources provided data which was used to produce the land availability layer:

• Worldpop provided population density data.
• International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) provided crop area data.

Water availability was defined as the amount of rainfall and inflow accumulation in a given area.The following sources provided data which was used to produce the water availability layer:

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was provided rainfall distribution maps from 2008 to 2017.Thereafter, data for deriving flow accumulation was acquired from (Lehner et al., 2008)

My time in Nairobi has come to an end. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to the success of my research work. It was such a great experience working with people from different disciplines and vast walks of life. It is mind-blowing that even if their disciplines and backgrounds are diverse, they are all working towards achieving one goal which is promoting sustainable livelihoods. It was really an honour working with my colleagues from ILRI and CIAT.A special thanks to Dr. Alan Duncan, Dr. Philip Thornton, Dr. Chris Jones and Dr. Todd Crane for their guidance.