Suchergebnisse

Tropical montane forests are known to support many endemic species with restricted geographic ranges. Many of these species are however, faced with numerous threats, most notably from habitat loss and degradation, invasive alien species, and climate change. Examples include Taita Apalis and Taita Thrush. Taita Apalis (Apalis fuscigularis) and Taita Thrush (Turdus helleri) are species of birds listed as Critically Endangered by the Government of Kenya and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). They are endemic to Taita Hills' cloud forests in southeastern Kenya and protected under Wildlife Conservation and Management Act. As they face high risk of extinction, exploring their habitat suitability is imperative for their protection. To determine the current spatial distribution and the key ecogeographical explanatory factors and conditions affecting species distribution and indirect effects on species survival and reproduction, we employed Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) modelling. This study was conducted in Ngangao and Vuria forests in June and July 2019 and 2020. Ngangao forest is gazetted as forest reserve and managed by the Kenya Forest Service whereas Vuria is nongazetted and thus remains without official protection status. Ecogeographical explanatory variables; climatic, remote sensing-, LIDAR-, topography-and landscape-based variables were used in modelling and separate models were produced. 23 occurrence records of Taita Apalis and 30 of Taita Thrush from Ngangao and 21 of Taita Apalis from Vuria forests were used in the modelling. According to the models, less than 7% of the total area of Ngangao and Vuria forests was predicted as suitable habitat for Taita Apalis and Taita Thrush. This shows that these two species are more vulnerable to extinction from demographic stochasticity. Consequently, managing their habitats is critical for their long-term persistence. LIDAR-based canopy height range and elevation greatly influenced Taita Apalis distribution in Ngangao forest, with areas of high ...

Participation of local people is often neglected in natural resource management, which leads to failure to understand the social aspects and historical construction of environmental problems. Participatory mapping can enhance the communication of local spatial knowledge for management processes and challenge the official maps and other spatial representations produced by state authorities and scientists. In this study, we analyze what kind of social meanings can be revealed through a multimethod participatory mapping process focusing on water resources in Taita Hills, Kenya. The participatory mapping clearly complicates the simplified image of the physical science mappings, typically depicting natural water supply, by addressing the impacts of contamination, inadequate infrastructure, poverty, distance to the sources, and restrictions in their uses on people's access to water. Moreover, this shared exercise is able to trigger discussion on issues that cannot always be localized but still contribute to place making. Local historical accounts reveal the social and political drivers of the current water-related problems, making explicit the political ecology dynamics in the area. ; Peer reviewed

With the simultaneous rise of concern about the climate crisis and the growing internationalization of research institutions, academic mobility poses an "academic paradox": knowledge of the environmental harm of aviation does not necessarily translate into action. Universities must make changes to their mobility habits if they wish to comply with governmental carbon neutrality targets and lead with example. This research looks at Finland's 14 universities and identifies the patterns and trends of academic mobility from a series of reports provided by the universities and their travel agencies. Moreover, we mapped the travel destinations to understand the scope of Finnish academic travel. The data revealed that Finnish universities are in different states of sustainability: some acting as clear trendsetters and others lagging. The results show that although the universities are performing well in some areas, as in preferring European destinations over intercontinental ones, there are still areas of improvement related to stopover reduction, the number of 1- and 2-day trips, and alternative transport forms to aviation. There is also a need for the standardization of targets and emission calculators. These key development areas are posed as recommendations through which the universities could easily reduce the carbon footprint of their mobility. ; Peer reviewed

There is a growing demand for geospatial technologies and skills in Kenya due to on-going devolution of government to the county level, development of GIS-based National Land Management Information System, and digitalization of information and maps to databases. Furthermore, adaptation of agricultural production to the impacts of climate change, and its transition towards climate-smart landscape approach require support from geospatial technologies to stakeholders to sustainably manage land use interactions, such as soil, water and nutrients along with agro-forestry, livestock, husbandry, and forest and grassland utilization at landscape level. We developed a simple and visual Multifunctional Agricultural Landscape Mosaic (MALM) Story Map and Web Application to support this transition and adoption of open access geospatial technology among the universities, government organizations and NGOs in Kenya. The thematic content of the web application was designed to support climate change adaptation action planning in the target area with a focus on water resources, conservation agriculture, agro-forestry for the smallholder farms, and insect pest management. This chapter describes the emerging challenges of advancing geospatial technologies in Kenya, presents the results of a feasibility study of MALM and discusses its potential in supporting spatial planning and decision-making in climate change adaptation in the Taita Hills, southeast Kenya. ; Peer reviewed

Funding. Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant, grant/Award no.: 661211 and NERC, grant/Award no. NE/J008001/1.7881299 Acknowledgements. The research was authorized by the Kenyan government (NCST 5/002/R/274/4). Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and Academy of Finland for funding BIODEV and TAITAWATER. Research permit from NACOSTI (no. P/18/97336/26355) for SMARTLAND funded by Academy of Finland (no. 318645). ; Peer reviewed ; Postprint

This study was supported by a VLIR-VLADOC scholarship and funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 661211 awarded to JA, research grants G.0055.08 G.0149.09 and G.0308.13 of Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), and the FWO Research Network on Eco-Evolutionary dynamics. SCFP and JMJT were supported by the project TenLamas funded by the French Ministère de l'Energie, de l'Ecologie, du Développement Durable et de la Mer through the EU FP6 BiodivERsA Eranet and by NERC grant NE/J008001/1. GB was supported by the SCALES project (www.scales-project.net). We acknowledge the Taita Research Station of the University of Helsinki for logistic support, and Taita field assistants and students from Ghent University for their help with data collection. ; Peer reviewed ; Publisher PDF