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Shaping the Herders’ “Mental Maps”: Participatory Mapping with Pastoralists’ to Understand Their Grazing Area Differentiation and Characterization

Environmental Management volume 56, pages 721–737 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

Understanding the perception of environmental resources by the users is an important element in planning its sustainable use and management. Pastoralist communities manage their vast grazing territories and exploit resource variability through strategic mobility. However, the knowledge on which pastoralists’ resource management is based and their perception of the grazing areas has received limited attention. To improve this understanding and to document this knowledge in a way that can be communicated with ‘outsiders’, we adopted a participatory mapping approach using satellite imagery to explore how Borana pastoralists of southern Ethiopia differentiated and characterized their grazing areas. The Borana herders conceptualized their grazing areas as set of distinctive grazing units each having specific names and characteristics. The precise location and the borders of each grazing unit were identified on the satellite image. In naming of the grazing units, the main differentiating criteria were landforms, vegetation types, prevalence of wildlife species, and manmade features. Based on the dominant soil type, the grazing units were aggregated into seasonal grazing areas that were described using factors such as soil drainage properties, extent of woody cover, main grass species, and prevalence of ecto-parasites. Pastoralists ranking of the seasonal grazing areas according to their suitability for cattle grazing matched with vegetation assessment results on the abundance of desirable fodder varieties. Approaching grazing area differentiation from the pastoralists’ perspectives improves the understanding of rangeland characteristics that pastoralists considered important in their grazing management and visualization of their mental representation in digital maps eases communication of this knowledge.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the German Federal Ministry (BMZ) for funding this research work within the collaborative project “Livelihood diversifying potential of livestock based carbon sequestration options in pastoral and agro-pastoral systems in Africa” led by ILRI Nairobi. Our gratitude also goes to the Borana community members who volunteered their time and information that made this work insightful and enjoyable. Astrid Szogs is thanked for language editing of the paper. We also thank Boku Tache, Christian Hülsebusch, and Mohammed Said for general support to the project. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for the constructive and insightful comments.

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There are no perceived or actual conflicts of interest by the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Institute for Tropical and Sub-tropical Agriculture (DITSL), University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Hussein T. Wario & Brigitte Kaufmann

  2. National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya

    Hassan G. Roba

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  1. Hussein T. Wario
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  2. Hassan G. Roba
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  3. Brigitte Kaufmann
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Correspondence to Hussein T. Wario.

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Wario, H.T., Roba, H.G. & Kaufmann, B. Shaping the Herders’ “Mental Maps”: Participatory Mapping with Pastoralists’ to Understand Their Grazing Area Differentiation and Characterization. Environmental Management 56, 721–737 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0532-y

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