Land-use changes and the invasion dynamics of shrubs in Baringo

ABSTRACT

In the semi-arid savannahs around Lake Baringo, Kenya, the recent spread of bush encroachment by the invasive alien species Prosopis juliflora and the native Dodonaea viscosa has changed human–environment interactions. This article suggests how the spread dynamics of Prosopis and Dodonaea have operated. It also describes the strategies Baringo's peoples have adopted in the face of this dramatic bush invasion, relates these dynamics to current invasion theory, and analyses possible implications for Baringo's social–ecological systems. It is suggested that recent increased climate variability has triggered changes in land management and livelihoods around Lake Baringo, paving the way for bush encroachment and species invasion. The extent and speed of these changes has exceeded the capacity of local communities to adapt their productive systems, destabilizing the socio-ecology of the dryland savannahs around Lake Baringo and placing them in imminent danger of collapse.

KEYWORDS:

• Disturbance hypothesis
• Dodonaea viscosa
• invasive plant species
• mesquite
• Prosopis juliflora
• social–ecological systems

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

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Additional information

Funding

This work was conducted in the context of the project ‘Resilience, Collapse and Reorganisation in Social–Ecological Systems of African savannahs' supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) [grant number BE-2491/4–2], [grant number BE-2491/8-1].