Sustainable Land Management Practices and Environmental Disaster Risk in Quarit Wereda, Amhara Region, Ethiopia
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Date
2020-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Land degradation associated to mismanagement and utilization of natural resources is among
concerning challenge in developing countries including Ethiopia. In response to the challenge,
Ethiopian government and its partners have been implementing different land management
practices; however the role of the practice was not sufficiently researched. Therefore this paper
assessed the role of sustainable land management (SLM) practices for reducing land
degradation in Quarit wereda, Amhara region, Ethiopia. Mixed research design method was
employed to collect quantitative data from randomly selected 150 HHs and qualitative data in
two purposefully selected rural kebeles, where descriptive statistics was used to analyze the
quantitative data. The analysis revealed that the most (75%) survey households have been
implementing SLMP on croplands varying from on 93.6% barley cultivated farmlands to 32.7%
on vegetable farms. The major SLM practices adopted by study community include stone bund
(26%), soil bund (39%), strip cropping (75%) and contour farming (87%). Nevertheless, as the
study community largely depend on livestock production, the sector depend on crop residues and
very scarce and poorly managed communal grazing lands, which tells that the livestock has been
creating considerable effect on sustainable land management. The study community also
acknowledged the significance of SLM practices as it to minimize land degradation by reduced
soil erosion (86.7%), increasing water holding capacity of soil (63%), improve soil fertility
(59%), increased agricultural productivity (55%), reducing land degradation (34%), flooding
(24%) and land slide (22%). Most of the respondent households (94%) reported that nature of
landform was key factor that influence their decision to implement SLM. From theses we can
learn that adoption of SLM practice have been improving over time, however more promotion
and extension required until the entire farming community understood significance of the
practices and implement it wherever required.
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Keywords
land, land management, land degradation, soil erosion, sustainable land management