Browsing by Author "Nzunda, Emmanuel Fred"

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Conservation policy, type of protected area and deforestation in mainland Tanzania
(Science Publishing Group, 2021) Nzunda, Emmanuel Fred
Protected areas are an important means of controlling deforestation. However, the effectiveness of protected areas in controlling deforestation depends on type of protected area which determines conservation policy pursued and thus how the protected area is managed. This paper reports on analysis of the relationship between deforestation and type of protected area, namely forest reserve, game reserve and national park in mainland Tanzania. The analysis used maps covering the whole of mainland Tanzania for 1995 and 2010 and applied GIS analytical techniques. Both forest reserves and game reserves had lower deforestation than areas that were not protected whereas national parks had higher deforestation than areas that were not protected. However, forest reserves had higher rate of deforestation than game reserves. These results raise questions with regards to ecological processes and policy options relevant for the three types of protected areas and their effects on deforestation. First, are the differences in deforestation due to varying levels of effectiveness of measures used to control deforestation among the three types of protected areas? Second, what is the role of natural processes such as elephants that kill trees? Third, why should national parks be associated with the highest rate of deforestation? Are forests so bad for wild animals in national parks? These questions form the basis of the discussion of the results.
Drivers and their influences on variation of aboveground carbon removals in miombo woodlands of mainland Tanzania
(BMC [Commercial Publisher], 2020-05) Manyanda, Bernardol John; Nzunda, Emmanuel Fred; Mugasha, Wilson Ancelm; Malimbwi, Rogers Ernest
Background Removals caused by both natural and anthropogenic drivers such as logging and fire causes substantial carbon emissions. Better insights into drivers and their variations of aboveground carbon removals is therefore needed. We assessed the drivers of aboveground carbon (AGC) removals and quantified the dynamics of removals-induced carbon emissions due to drivers using the National Forest Resources Assessment and Monitoring (NAFORMA) data sets in R software. Miombo woodlands which is the largest forest formations covering about 93% of forest land in mainland Tanzania was the case study.
Land use and land cover change within and around the greater Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania
(Science Publishing Group, 2020) Kija, Hamza Khalid; Ogutu, Joseph Ochieng; Mangewa, Lazaro Johana; Bukombe, John; Verones, Francesca; Graae, Bente Jessen; Kideghesho, Jafari Ramadhani; Said, Mohammed Yahya; Nzunda, Emmanuel Fred
Land use and land cover (LULC) changes can pose profound impacts on wildlife habitats, abundance and distribution and on human-dominated landscapes. We investigated LULC changes in the Greater Serengeti ecosystem, Tanzania, for a period of 41 years from 1975 to 2015. Specifically, we mapped LULC types for 1975, 1995 and 2015 and assessed the corresponding changes during 1975-1995, 1995-2015 and 1975-2015. We used the random forest classification algorithm to classify Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (+ETM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) into eight main classes. We obtained accuracies of 88.4%, 90.6% and 93.4% with Kappa Indices of Agreement (KIA) of 0.86, 0.87 and 0.91 for 1975, 1995 and 2015, respectively. Grassland, shrubland and woodland were the major LULC types throughout 1975-2015 with percentage coverages of 50.6%, 23.7% and 20.9% for 1975; 54.2%, 23.5% and 15.9% for 1995; and 57.0%, 23.8% and 8.9% for 2015, respectively. Overall, woodland cover (-11.1%) was converted to most of the other cover types during 1975-2015. The loss of woodland cover is due to increasing human population size, agriculture, settlements and policy changes fires and elephant browsing. Effective conservation policies and regulation of socio-economic activities in the ecosystem and its buffer area are essential to ameliorate declining vegetation cover, especially along the protected areas boundaries.