| dc.description.abstract | Turkana County is a County in Kenya which spans 71,597.8 km² making it the largest County in
Kenya and has a population of approximately 855,399 (Government of Kenya, 2010).
It is bordered by the countries of Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the North, Ethiopia to the
Northeast, and Lake Turkana to the East. Neighbouring counties in Kenya are West Pokot to the
South West, Baringo to the South and Samburu to South East. It is bound between latitudes 0.90
N and 5.50 N and longitudes 340E and 370E.
The project aimed at the development of land use zones for Turkana County with the use of
remote sensing and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technologies.
Spatial Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is a proven method for land-use planning
purposes. However, most land-use planning applications focus on a specific theme, such as urban
development and are often limited to a relatively small area.
As the project area was really large in size, 71,597.8 km², the approach used was with reference
to the Land-Use Conflict Identification Strategy (LUCIS) model, which was developed at the
University of Florida in The United States of America.
Criteria to be used for the suitability analysis were designed to suit the Turkana area and this
resulted in the identification of data to be used, that is, land cover, rainfall, slope and lithological
formation.
Four main land-use zones, that can support urban and settlement areas, rain fed agriculture,
irrigated agriculture and livestock were then identified.
Stakeholder’s involvement was realized by assigning weights to the goals and resulting
preference maps. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used as the weighting method to
assign weights to the objectives identified for the zones of interest. Suitability maps for the four
zones were then created. Finally, the suitability maps of the three land-use categories were
combined, in order to visualize conflict areas.
In conclusion, Turkana County has the potential to support urban and settlement areas, rain fed
agriculture, irrigated agriculture and livestock and this could be implemented on the ground. | en_US |
