Daniel Olago

University of Nairobi | UON ·  Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation at the University of Nairobi

Isiolo dam is planned to be constructed along the Ewaso Nyiro River to provide water to the planned Isiolo resort city, one of the Lamu Port and Southern Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor projects. This paper evaluates the factors driving land cover transitions and their effects, as a consequence of the proposed infrastructure developments with...

Wetlands such as the Yala swamp in Kenya are among the most important and increasingly threatened ecosystems globally due to their ecological significance and complexity, and the importance of the ecosystem services (ES) they provide to wetland communities. Appropriate governance and management of wetlands thus require the use of interdisciplinary...

Groundwater dynamics in continental rift zone settings remain poorly understood because of the spatial heterogeneity in flow, storage, and recharge dynamics. The Central Kenya Rift is an excellent example where, though groundwater is important for domestic, irrigation, and geothermal energy exploitation, its hydrogeological properties remain largel...

Land cover has been modified by anthropogenic activities for thousands of years, although the speed of change has increased in recent decades, particularly driven by socio-economic development. The development of transport infrastructure can accelerate land use land cover change, resulting in impacts on natural resources such as water, biodiversity...

Lake Victoria, a lifeline for millions of people in East Africa, is affected by anthropogenic activities resulting in eutrophication and impacting the aquatic life and water quality. Therefore, understanding the ongoing changes in the catchment is critical for its restoration. In this context, catchment and lake sediments are important archives in...

Paleoanthropologists have long speculated about the role of environmental change in shaping human evolution in Africa. In recent years, drill cores of late Neogene lacustrine sedimentary rocks have yielded valuable high-resolution records of climatic and ecosystem change. Eastern African Rift sediments (primarily lake beds) provide an extraordinary...

Climate change hazards including droughts and floods are adversely affecting crop productivity and food security among Kenyan smallholder farmers. This article analyzes rainfall and temperature change effects on household food security in Kimandi-Wanyaga, in Murang’a County, Kenya. Both the meteorological and the community perceptions were analyzed...

Tropical Africa experienced large changes in hydroclimatic conditions since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), ∼26.5 to 19 thousand years (ka or kyr) ago. The hydrogen isotopic composition of fossil leaf waxes (δDwax), assumed to record past variations in the hydrogen isotopic composition of precipitation (δDprecip), is increasingly being used to stud...

Anza basin is located in the extensional arm of the central African rift system in the North-Eastern part of Kenya. Cretaceous sedimentary rocks were sampled from the four wells namely, Chalbi-3, Sirius-1, Ndovu-1 and Kaisut-1. Anza basin occurs on a fault block within a Paleocene-Cretaceous rift basin. The methodological approach used for the eval...

Multi-proxy high-resolution records relating to climate and dominant vegetation cover have been obtained from a peat deposit retrieved from the Kapsabet swamp in western Kenya. The 4-m long peat sequence provided a continuous sedimentation record spanning ca. 3023 cal yr BP to the present and is representative of the late Holocene changes in the re...

Kenya has many lakes which have evolved through geological time; most of the modern ones were created during the Lower to Middle Pleistocene. While all of them react to climate changes over geological timescales, a number of them are highly sensitive to even seasonal climate variations, fluctuating quite dramatically in surface area and level, and...

Transportation infrastructure, such as railways, roads and power lines, contribute to national and regional economic, social and cultural growth and integration. Kenya, with support from the Chinese government, is currently constructing a standard gauge railway (SGR) to support the country’s Vision 2030 development agenda. Although the actual land...

Climate change poses significant risks to food security globally with predictions of 10-20 % decline in rain-fed crop yields by 2050. Sub-Saharan Africa remains highly susceptible to food shortage since over 95 % of the region’s total cropland is rain-fed. Kenya’s over reliance on rain-fed agriculture predisposes the country to climate-induced food...

Grassland degradation and the concomitant loss of soil organic carbon is widespread in tropical arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Afforestation of degraded grassland, sometimes by using invasive alien trees, has been put forward as a legitimate climate change mitigation strategy. However, even in cases where tree encroachment of degraded gra...

The advent of anthropogenic global warming and widespread modification of the climate, landscape and environment has brought humans to the fore as a formidable force of nature. The terrestrial and aquatic environment of the East African region is sensitive to a variety of global, regional and local stresses. The geological materials along East Afri...

Access to water and sanitation remain a challenge in many developing countries, especially in pro-poor urban informal settlements where socioeconomic livelihoods are generally low. The aim of this study was to characterise the water and sanitation facilities in the informal settlements of Kisumu City and to evaluate their effect on community hygien...

This study assessed the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity in Oyo State, Southwest Nigeria. The study sourced primary data from a total of 411 households who are mainly farmers and it also used different methods and approaches including Standardized Anomaly Index (SAI), Coefficient of variation (CV), Adaptation Decision Matrix (...

The global quest for a sustainable bio-economy has brought to the fore importance of engaging agricultural systems in the production and in practice change. There have been issues limiting farmers from improving the practice of manure management as smart climate technology. The objective of this paper was to highlight the constraints, type, and val...

Smallholder dairy farmers occupy high potential areas of Kenya and are a source of manure, crops and milk. There is need to use other means of characterising smallholder dairy farmers as they mostly practice mixed farming. The objective of this paper is to use cluster analysis method to characterize the smallholder dairy farmers with added farmer a...

Kisumu city, like many cities in the developing world, has increased burden of urban informal settlements where access to basic sanitation and water remain a challenge. Despite several studies focussing on sanitation and water situation within Kisumu environment, elaborate research on the influence of shallow water table on the construction of faci...

Ensuring water security to urban population in fragile environments through interlinked systems of groundwater abstraction, storage and distribution of sufficient quantity is challenging especially to urban utilities situated in arid and semi-arid regions. The purpose of this research was to evaluate water delivery challenges for water utilities in...

The African Great Lakes (AGL) have rich fisheries and are renowned “biodiversity hotspots”. Consequently the AGLand the ecosystem services they provide, underpin the welfare and livelihoods of over 50 million people across 10 countries. Despite the recognized importance of the AGL, these vital ecosystems and their livelihood support systems are thr...

An important aspect of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which aims to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5 °C by 2050, has been the development of monitoring and evaluation plans that integrate climate change perspectives into new policies and programs for the protection and functioning of ecological systems. These...

Vulnerability to climate change impact is the most pressing issues for less developed countries whose economy mainly depends on the agricultural sector. The demand for food is growing swiftly whereas impacts of climate change on the global food production are increasing. More area specific research outputs and evidences-based policy directions are...

Two billion people still consume drinking water contaminated with faeces. To improve this situation, it has been recognised by UNICEF and the WHO that a more rapid approach to detecting faecally contaminated drinking water is necessary. We have previously demonstrated that fluorescence spectroscopy is a significant real-time indicator of the presen...

The industrialization process taking place in Africa has led to an overall increase in groundwater abstraction in most countries in the continent. However, the lack of hydrogeological data, as in many developing countries, makes it difficult to properly manage groundwater systems. This study presents a real case study in which a combination of diff...

Woody alien plant species have been deliberately introduced globally in many arid and semi-arid regions, as they can provide services and goods to the rural poor. However, some of these alien trees and shrubs have become invasive over time, with important impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. Prosopis was introduced in...

Geomorphological and sedimentary records near the confluences of the Tana River and major tributaries draining the eastern slopes of Mt. Kenya and the Nyambeni Range, indicate impacts of Late Quaternary volcanic activity in their fluvial records. The main reconstructed event was triggered by a 366.9 ka basalt flow (⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dated) which flowed alo...

In 2016–17 much of East Africa was affected by a severe drought which has been attributed to Indian Ocean Dipole and El Niño Southern Oscillation conditions. Extreme events such as this have immediate and knock-on effects on water availability for household, agricultural and industrial use. Groundwater resources can provide a buffer in times of dro...

There is a consensus that current trends in climate change may be due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (predominantly methane and carbon dioxide) from anthropogenic emissions. Among measures proposed for curbing this increase is Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in geological media. CCS incorporates three technologies comprisin...

Woody alien plant species have been deliberately introduced globally in many arid and semi-arid regions as they can provide services and goods to the rural poor. However, some of these alien trees and shrubs have become invasive over time, with important impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. Prosopis was introduced in Ba...

This report presents the results of the study ‘‘Development Corridors in Kenya: Scoping Study”. The objective was to review the current baseline situation in relation to mega-scale development corridor projects in Kenya vis à vis the people and society, environment, conservation and development. The work forms the basis for the planning and impleme...

Tackling global inequalities in access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) remains an urgent issue – 58% of annual diarrhoeal deaths are caused by inadequate WASH provision. A global context of increasing urbanisation, changing demographics and health transitions demands an understanding and impact of WASH on a broad set of health outcomes. We...

Based on a five-town case-study cohort in Kenya, a conceptual framework has been developed to enable the formulation of holistic and effective strategies that encompass the national aspirations and regional to global sustainability agendas, and which can be used to monitor progress in achieving set objectives. The approach is flexible, scalable and...

There have been drastic changes in land-use patterns in the Marsabit Forest Reserve (MFR) as a consequence of anthropogenic processes for livelihood improvement over time. The objective of this study was to assess the land-use and land-cover changes (LULCC), especially those related to the forest cover, in the MFR using multi-temporal Landsat image...

This study presents past and projected temporal changes in mean temperature and rainfall around the Marsabit Forest Reserve (MFR), a sub-humid montane forest in Kenya. Rainfall data for the period 1961–2014 and temperature data for the period 1972–2011 were acquired from the Marsabit meteorological station. Future projections (2006–2100) were based...

Non-technical summary The El Niño event in 2015/2016 was one of the strongest since at least 1950. Through surveys and interviews with key informants, we found businesses in the capital cities of Zambia, Botswana and Kenya experienced major disruption to their activities from El Niño related hydroelectric load shedding, water supply disruption and...

Study region: the Turkwel river basin, Kenya experiences a high level of water scarcity due to its arid climate, high rainfall variability and rapidly growing water demand. Study focus: Climate change, variability and rapid growth in water demand pose significant challenges to current and future water resources planning and allocation worldwide....

Multi-proxy analysis of sediment cores from five key locations in hypersaline, alkaline Lake Bogoria (central Kenya Rift Valley) has allowed reconstruction of its history of depositional and hydrological change during the past 1300 years. Analyses including organic matter and carbonate content, granulometry, mineralogical composition, charcoal coun...

Climate change and variability is bound to impact Smallholder Dairy Farming Systems as a result of overreliance on rainfed fodder production; yet climate models project increased frequencies of droughts that have a bearing on the Length of Growing Period. Similarly higher environmental temperatures are partly attributed to biome-range shifts, imply...

The research study evaluated the reliability of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge (ITK) and conventional weather forecasts in the face of climate change and variability in Baringo County, Kenya. Systematic sampling technique was applied in drawing a sample size of 454 pastoralists and agro-pastoralists interviewed. Majority (68%) of the respondents...

The global increase in vector borne diseases has been linked to climate change. Seasonal vegetation changes are known to influence disease vector population. However, the relationship is more theoretical than quantitatively defined. There is a growing demand for understanding and prediction of climate sensitive vector borne disease risks especially...

Anopheles gambiae s.l. (Diptera: Culicidae) is responsible for the transmission of the devastating Plasmodium falciparum (Haemosporida: Plasmodiidae) strain of malaria in Africa. This study investigated the relationship between climate and environmental conditions and An. gambiae s.l. larvae abundance and modelled the larval distribution of this sp...

Background: The decline in global malaria cases is attributed to intensified utilization of primary vector control interventions and artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). These strategies are inadequate in many rural areas, thus adopting locally appropriate integrated malaria control strategies is imperative in these heterogeneous settin...

The Marsabit Forest Reserve (MFR), a green island in an arid environmental setting, generates multiple ecosystem goods and services (ES) to the local community critical for their livelihoods. The forest has been experiencing substantial land conversion for town expansion, agriculture production and settlements threatening long-term ES provision. Su...

The quantification of carbon stocks is vital for decision making in forest management, carbon stock change assessment and scientific applications. We applied the land degradation surveillance framework (LDSF) method with a sentinel site of (10 km × 10 km) to assess carbon stock levels and tree diversity in Marsabit Forest Reserve (MFR). The above g...