THE IMPACT OF LAND REFORM PROGRAMME ON LANDCOVER AND LANDUSE CHANGE IN CHIPINGE DISTRICT, ZIMBABWE
BACKGROUND
Land use change and land cover over time is an inevitable phenomenon occurring globally due to both temporary and or permanent interest of the inhabitants in a particular area (Eludoyin et al, 2010). Most parts of the world are not in their natural state due to a number of reasons and mainly human activities. Due to anthropogenic activities, the earth’s surface is being significantly altered and the presence on the Earth of man and his use of land has had a profound effect upon the natural environment (Wilkie and Finn, 1996). Land use and land cover change (LULCC), has become a central component in current strategies for managing natural resources and monitoring environmental changes.
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Lambin and Heist (2006) define land cover as the observed biophysical cover on the earth's surface, including grassland, agricultural land, forest land, recreation area or a built up area. Land use is characterized by the arrangements, activities and inputs people undertake in a certain land cover type to produce, change or maintain it (Briaussolis, 2000). She also states that, land-cover change refers to any change in the land that reduces its productive potentiality whereas land-use change is a process by which human activities transform the landscape. Land cover changes may result either from land conversion (a change from one cover type to another), or land modification which are alterations of structure or function without a wholesale change from one type to another, or even maintenance of land in its current condition against agents of change. Land use and land cover change are strongly
Land clearing is the process of removing bushland, forest, woodland or grassland, and most commonly occurs in Queensland and New South Wales. Over the last 200 years 70 percent of Australia’s native vegetation was cleared, most occurring in the past 50 years. Approximately 6 million hectares of various ecosystems were removed between 2001 and 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_clearing_in_Australia, 2010). Australia’s land has been utilized over the past century even though it is known as ‘one of the driest and least fertile continents of the world’ (Australian Conservation Foundation, 2000), although land clearing is still an issue due to increased soil salinity and greenhouse gases.
Remote sensing technology provides a cost-effective method to acquire biophysical information across the 2.5 million km2 area represented by the combined Queensland and New South Wales territories (Meier et al. 2011). SLATS commenced in 1995 to develop methods and technologies to provide environmental monitoring (Kuhnell et al. 1998). SLATS produce a Foliage Projective Cover (FPC) Product which is used to inform environment and climate change analysis and subsequent decision making (Huete 2012).
Walker, Robert, and William Solecki. "Theorizing Land-Cover and Land-Use Change: The Case of the Florida Everglades and Its Degradation." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94.2 (2004): 311-28. JSTOR. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
Take, for example, that livestock agriculture and the plant-based agriculture specifically used for feeding that livestock utilizes 30 percent of land on Earth. With crops in high demand to feed the many animals that are slaughtered or otherwise used by humans, it's been found that the soil has lost a great deal of its nutritional value and has eroded to the point that, in the United States, nearly 33 percent of topsoil is diminished.
As the international community focuses on climate change as the great crisis of our era, it is ignoring another looming problem: the global crisis in land use. Seed Magazine
David Cuff and Andrew S. Goudie. “Encyclopedia of Global Change”. Oxford University Press. Cronon, Changes in the land
The graph shows the results that were expected from the land use questionnaire. In the tables, the trend in the graphs show the total’s and average’s over 147 years.
· Land: the land itself, and raw materials such as oil and minerals beneath it. The natural resources that is available without alteration or effort on the part of humans. Land as a resource includes only unique fertility and mineral deposits, topography, climate, water and vegetation. Trees grown are not categorized as land because they have been deliberately grown on the other hand Trees in a natural rainforest are a natural resource and thus classify as land. The reward for letting others use land is called rent.
Agriculture has been around for over 10,000 years. Now something that has survived that long has to be important. In fact over 50% of the world's workforce is involved in some kind of agricultural job. Agriculture provides the world with most of its food, construction materials, fabrics, and paper products.
Understanding what is meant by land is relatively simple. This comprises all of the natural resources that a particular producer has at their disposal. Most often this means immediate natural resources, like oil or the property on which the production facility is located. This can also include the water or ocean that is close to the facility. The factor of production called land most often comprises the natural and raw materials which are used in production and are at the disposal of the production facility.(2)
On the one hand, participatory approach to land use planning can provide openings for the decentralized administration of land management and enhance legal protection of local land rights through contributing to formal recognition of existing land tenure systems. According to Chigbu et al, (2015) four functions of land use planning that directly links to tenure security. (1) Its capacity to identify or determine land areas, parcels and uses and users. (2) Its propensity to enable documentation of land areas, parcels, rights, restrictions and responsibilities. (3) The opportunities it provides for stakeholder involvement, compensation of claims and community participation. (4) Its impact on land value, land markets and credit opportunities. On the other hand, land use planning, promoting sustainable natural resource use and environmental management are generally part of the mandate of local governments. And these prerogatives often tend to be weakly developed, both legally and with respect to capacity building and methodology (Hilhorst 2010). Unclear property rights and tenure insecurity are the major constraints to the potential of successful land use planning. According to UN-Habitat (2008, p. 17), poor land use planning associated with insecurity of tenure and incompletely specified land rights leads to problems of air and water-borne pollution from agricultural and industrial land use. Though there is a
In the last 50 years, agriculture has intensified and yields per hectare have been rising. Intensification has allowed for a reversal of destruction of land. More land has been spared due to increased intensities. In India, 42 million hectares of land have been spared, approximately the size of California and globally, the world has saved an area the size of the Amazon (Ausubel, 1996). Of all human activities, agriculture transforms the...
Our landscape is constantly changing, since the Big Bang Theory to present day. There are many different factors which can a huge impact on the shaping of the land. There are many natural disasters such as floods, typhoons, earthquakes, hurricanes, and even wildfires. They can change the face of the landscape and they can change the shape of the landscape. Then there is also the human factor. Many huge companies and businesses are always taking advantage, or as Denis Wood refers to as in “The Spell of the Land,” the raping of the land. It is a very rare sight to being driving nowadays and not see some type of building being built or a future sight of some type of business. There is nothing that can be done when looking at the natural disaster factor, but as for the human factor, there are steps that people can do to prevent the “raping” of the land. Again, like I touched upon in the introduction, not all usage of the land by companies is a negative thing.
According to a statement made by UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) on December 10, 1993, “Desertification is ‘one of the most serious global environmental problems’” (“Desertification: Not About, 1994). When discussing the topic of desertification, two common questions are, “What is desertification exactly, and how is it possible for the desert to advance?” Desertification is a term that describes “the loss of productive land to desert” (“Desertification”, 2013). It’s a common, innocent public misconception that the desert is advancing; however, this in fact is not the case. When an area u...
One of the reasons for loss in biodiversity is alteration of habitats. A habitat is the natural environment in which a species of living organism lives. If the habitat of a species is changed, it will cause the species to die or migrate to other places where it can find its natural habitat. There are many ways in which the habitat of plants and animals can be altered. One of them is land use changes. Since the beginning of human life, human beings have been changing land use for farming. Large areas of forests have been cleared by humans to increase the area of farming to satisfy their growing needs. Many biodiversity-rich landscape characteristics have been lost due to intensive farming (Young, Richards, Fischer, Halada, Kull, Kuzniar, Tartes, Uzunov & Watt, 2007). For example, traditional farming was replaced by private farms in Europe after the First World War causing an immense change in land use patterns. Another major proble...