Study on Land Use Activities and Their Effects on Soil Erosion on the Slopes of Kajulu Hills, Kisumu County, Kenya
Soil erosion is a natural occurrence, but human activities speed it up ten to forty times faster than natural events. Because soils build at a slower rate than they are destroyed, it calls for mitigation measures to reduce the consequences of erosion. In Kenya’s upland habitat, the Kajulu hills, a research was undertaken on land use activities and their impacts on soil erosion. The study evaluated the efficiency of the residents’ mitigation strategies for reducing the effects of erosion on the hill slopes. The study used a sample size of 295 families out of 1600 that engaged in various mitigating actions. Using the collector ditch methodology, the researchers gathered data on the amount of soil (kg) lost from agricultural lands. Frequency distribution tables and the Man U-test were used to examine the data. The results showed that agricultural land without mitigating measures lost twice as much soil (1.198 kg/m2) as plots with cut off ditches (0.615 kg/m2) and vegetative strips (0.904 kg/m2) with Man U=7. Because it was based on one rainy season, these findings were higher than the global estimate of soil erosion in arable mountainous terrain, which ranges between 1.3-40.kg/m2/year (13-40T/Ha/year). The data revealed that the farmers’ soil erosion mitigation methods, such as cut-off ditches and vegetative strips, were effective with Man U=7 under the cut-off ditches and vegetative strips.
Author(s) Details
J. Otieno
Department of Geography and Social Sciences, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, P.O.Box 210-40601, Bondo, Kenya.
A. C. Otieno
Department of Geography and Social Sciences, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, P.O.Box 210-40601, Bondo, Kenya.
K. W. Tonui
Department of Geography and Social Sciences, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, P.O.Box 210-40601, Bondo, Kenya.
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