Prosopis invasion and management scenarios for Baringo County, Kenya

Climate change, land degradation and invasive alien species (IAS) threaten
grassland ecosystems worldwide. IAS clearing and grassland restoration
would help to reduce the negative effects of IAS, restore the original
vegetation cover, and sustain livelihoods while contributing to climate
change mitigation, but uncertain financial benefits to local stakeholders
hamper such efforts. This study assessed where and when net financial
benefit could be realised from Prosopis juliflora management and
subsequent grassland restoration by combining ecological, social and
financial information. Impacts of Prosopis invasion and grassland
degradation on soil organic carbon (SOC) in nine sublocations in Baringo
County, Kenya, were evaluated. Then the financial impacts of Prosopis
removal and grassland restoration in the area were calculated and
spatially explicit management scenarios for each sublocation modelled,
combining geographic information derived from satellite images taken in
different years of the invasion with SOC data and socio-economic data
collected in the sublocations.The available budget, based on Baringo
households’ average willingness to pay, would enable removal, on average,
of one fifth of Prosopis per sublocation in a single year. A larger area
can be cleared if Prosopis is sparse than if it is dense. The analyses
show that in some sublocations, households’ annual investments could
result in restoration of all former grassland areas. This dataset contains
shapefiles of the evolution of Prosopis from 1995-2016 and shapefiles
containing three management scenarios for four sublocations in Baringo
County, Kenya.