This landscape-scale study combines analysis of multitemporal satellite imagery
spanning 30 years and information from field studies extending over
25 years to assess the extent and causes of land use and land cover change in
the Loitokitok area, southeast Kajiado District, Kenya. Rain fed and irrigated
agriculture, livestock herding, and wildlife and tourism have all experienced
rapid change in their structure, extent, and interactions over the past 30 years
in response to a variety of economic, cultural, political, institutional, and demographic
processes. Land use patterns and processes are explored through
a complementary application of interpretation of satellite imagery and case
study analysis that explicitly addresses the local–national spatial scale over a
time frame appropriate to the identification of fundamental causal processes.
The results illustrate that this combination provides an effective basis for describing
and explaining patterns of land use and land cover change and their
root causes