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Environment suitability mapping of livestock: A case study of Ethiopian indigenous sheep and goats

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Title Environment suitability mapping of livestock: A case study of Ethiopian indigenous sheep and goats
 
Creator Atassi, Layal
 
Contributor Haile, Aynalem
Solomon, Dawit
Demissie, T.
Rischkowsky, Barbara
Biradar, Chandrashekhar
Mwacharo, Joram
 
Subject geo-informatics
ecological niche modeling
no poverty
environmental health and biodiversity
 
Description Demand for livestock products is increasing as climate volatility threatens animal productivity and welfare. Therefore, novel technologies and approaches to meet these challenges are required. Geo-informatics and geo-visualization can address a critical question in this endeavor -where can improved indigenous, newly developed and composite breeds be introduced while retaining optimal productivity and resilience to climatic and environmental volatility? Here, a case study of four and two Ethiopian indigenous breeds of sheep (Atsbi, Doyogena, Horro, Menz) and goats (Abergelle, Yabello), and geo-informatics based spatial analytics generating, for each breed, a suitability index map is presented. The analysis reveals overlapping and breed-specific enviro-geographic and ecological suitability niches. More than 51% of Ethiopia is unsuitable for the optimal performance of the six breeds. The proportions of unsuitable land are 64.84% (Menz), 53.44% (Horro), 76.98% (Doyogena), 83.53% (Atsbi), 82.37% (Abergelle) and 63.89% (Yabello). The suitable production range for the four sheep breeds show a slight overlap, but that of the two goat breeds did not. The goats are best suited to the drylands, but the niche for Abergelle is in the north, and that of Yabello is in the south of Ethiopia. The heatmaps suggest that the mean annual temperature and precipitation have the largest contribution in the classification of geographic areas into suitability classes. Our results provide insights for targeting location specific species- and breed-interventions, and with climate change trajectories and natural resource base abundance, will be a major criterion for building resilient livestock production systems. Furthermore, ecological suitability mapping can allow practitioners to evaluate potential geographic ranges for newly-developed, experimental, and improved livestock breeds to design sustainable and innovative agro-ecological solutions.
 
Date 2022-11-01
2021-12-02T17:08:09Z
2021-12-02T17:08:09Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier https://mel.cgiar.org/reporting/download/hash/206705a294756b5295886aba40ee778e
Layal Atassi, Aynalem Haile, Dawit Solomon, T. Demissie, Barbara Rischkowsky, Chandrashekhar Biradar, Joram Mwacharo. (1/11/2022). Environment suitability mapping of livestock: A case study of Ethiopian indigenous sheep and goats. Small Ruminant Research, 216.
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11766/66516
Open access
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0
 
Format PDF
 
Publisher Elsevier (12 months)
 
Source Small Ruminant Research;216,(2022)