Analysis of past and projected future land use change and its impact on sediment fluxes in the Rwizi catchment

Land use changes in rural Sub-Sahara Africa are in many cases unsustainable. They often are characterised by continuous expansion of farmland into marginal landscapes, causing severe degradation of soil and water resources. This project aims at exploring alternative development pathways for these rural areas by evaluating possible future developments for the Rwizi catchment in Uganda which can be considered a representative case-study because of its strong population growth and the rapid degradation of the land. Firstly, the project aims a strengthening the academic research capacity at the universities of Mbarara and Gulu (Uganda) by means of the training of two PhD-researchers and several postdoctoral researchers in the field of integrated watershed management. Secondly the project will develop fundamental research on the, hitherto largely overlooked, coupling between demographic developments on the one hand and the degradation of soil and water resources on the other hand. Thirdly, the results from this fundamental research will be translated into landscape transformation models that will allow land managers and policymakers to evaluate alternative development pathways for the catchment.