dc.description.abstract | Land degradation is a worldwide phenomenon defined as “a gradual reduction or loss in the
biological or economic productive capacity of the land” (UNCCD, 2016). Land degradation is
closely linked with major global environmental themes like climate change, food and water
security, biodiversity decline and overall loss of ecosystem funct ions and services (Giuliani, et
al., 2020). The main cause of land degradation is the change in land use and land management
practices including overgrazing, deforestation and monocultures.
Fortunately, the importance of healthy landscapes as the basis for healthy societies and
economies has been recognized by the global community. The land degradation neutral world
goal is clearly stated in the Sustainable Development Goals targets.
This project employed Remote Sensing, GIS technologies together with ‘Trends. Earth’ model
and Google Earth Engine to monitor land degradation status and trend in Narok County in
Kenya. Three sub-indicators; change in Land Cover obtained from Landsat images, change in
Land Productivity and change in Soil Organic Carbon were used to analyse the aggregate land
degradation status using the principle of one-out-all-out on their overlayed pixels. The study
quantified the proportion of land in Narok county that is degraded, stable and the areas with
improvements by overlaying change in land cover, change in soil organic carbon and change in
land productivity datasets. The results showed that 54.13% of Narok county is stable, 41.48% is
degraded and 4.39% of the county is improving.
This study has shown that geospatial technologies have an important role in the realization of the
SDGs, especially SDG 15 which deals with life on land. Land degradation is proven through this
study to be occurring at the local or pixel level; therefore, the county governments and civil
societies should engage the communities in sustainable land management and ecosystem
restoration activities.
This study managed to highlight the land degradation status of Narok County. However, there is
still an opportunity for further research to demonstrate how these results can change when
uniform and high spatial resolution datasets are used. | en_US |