Seminars

The countries of the emerging regions rely more on climate sensitive natural resources, such as rain-fed agriculture. They have a poor capacity to withstand and recover from extreme events like floods and droughts. This study investigated the possible impacts of changing climate on water resources of two water basins: Nzoia, Kenya and Bagmati, Nepal. The Nzoia basin is expected to become drier and is more likely to face droughts while the Bagmati basin is expected to get wetter during the monsoon season and is more likely to witness floods.

Urban land use is one of the most powerful anthropogenic forces changing the Earth’s surface. The growth in urban land use, however, differs across the world as the push and pull factors for such growth varies. In West Africa, environmental parameters are thought to play a significant role in the growth of urban land use. This study, using Landsat data, investigated and quantified the interplay of environmental and socioeconomic factors for the growth of urban land use in selected cities of West Africa including Kumasi, Ghana. Preliminary results show a varied degree of influence of environmental factors.