Ecological and Socio-economic Impacts of Physical Soil and Water Conservation Practices

Book excerpt: Master's Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Physical Geography, Geomorphology, Environmental Studies, language: English, abstract: Physical soil and water conservation technologies including soil and stone bunds, cut-off drains and ditches/waterways were implemented in different place of Ethiopia particularly in the north and North West parts to minimize soil degradation. Regarding to this many research findings investigated the rate of soil erosion, the type of technologies adopted to reduce soil erosion and their effects on agricultural production. However their ecological and socio- economic impacts (particularly ecological impacts) were not highly investigated. Therefore this study was conducted at Gondar Zuria Woreda Northwest Ethiopia to investigate ecological and socio-economic impacts of physical SWC technologies. For this purpose both quantitative and qualitative designs were employed. A multistage sampling approach was used to identify the research subjects. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected via structured questionnaire, semi-structured key informant interview, FGDs and through field observations. The findings were analyzed with the help of descriptive and inferential statically tools. Land sat satellite image with Arc-GIS was employed to analyze the bio-physical dynamics of the study areas. Ten major factors those estimated as obstacles to implement physical soil and water conservation technologies in the study areas such as size of land; money; households labor; farmers knowledge (training); land tenure, farmers perception, sex, time and culture constraints were determined using logit regression model. Owing to this, the finding indicated that farm households who implemented each of (all) the newly installed physical SWC technologies were significantly greater than who did not implemented each of (all) technologies.