Participatory Approach to Irrigated Landscape Ecosystems Boundary Determination: Use of Transect Walk and Focus Group Discussion

Abstract

Agricultural landscapes are continuously changing under the influence of humans and nature, resulting in a variety of local impacts. Agricultural landscapes are the visual result of land uses that represent the cultural landscape group with origin, structure and ecological relations that differ from the natural landscapes. In the White Volta Basin (WVB), ecosystem boundaries are dynamic in both space and time, periodic evaluation is required to determine the boundaries and ecosystem services on which community livelihood depends on. The objective is to identify and evaluate the characteristics of the ecosystem’s boundaries and services in Irrigation Projects. Transect walk and focus group discussions are Participatory Rural Appraisal tools used. These participatory methods enabled the active participation of community members in research. Transact walk provided information on visual and physical characteristics in the ecosystems and focus group discussions with a checklist on thematic areas provided in-depth information on the ecosystem services’ availability and uses. Transect walk not only identifies ecosystem boundaries in a landscape but also aids in the evaluation of the type of provisioning services available between boundaries. From the study, it was established that irrigate ecosystems can be partitioned into catchment, upstream, midstream, and downstream with very distinct boundaries and specific ecosystem provisioning services accessible in the demarcations.