Investigation of the Lake Victoria Region (Africa: Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda)

Abstract

Current poster presents a GIS analysis of the Victoria Lake, Africa. Besides unique environment, Victoria lake plays an important role in the economy of the surrounding countries supporting 25 million people through lake fish catchment reaching up to 90-270$ per capita per annum. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda control 6%, 49% and 45% of the lake surface, respectively. Thus, the lake catchment provides for the livelihood of ca 1/3 of the population of all three countries which have an agricultural economy mostly supported by fishing and agriculture (tea and coffee plantations). The quality of the environment is therefore a fundamental factor in maintaining and increasing living standards of the growing population. The main actual problem of this region is sustainable development, well-balanced between overusing of the natural resources and human economic well-being and progress. Essential factors in this problem are rate of population growth and dimensions of natural resources management. Research objective. The current research focuses on the detailed investigation of the environmental, biological, social and economic characteristics of the region, aimed to monitoring and sustainable management of the area of interest. The main objective of this research is to create a database in form of Personal Geodatabase (.mbd) of the ArcGIS 9.3 software, that will be useful for solving the question of the sustainable development of the region. This database is intended to be used by environmental groups working for monitoring purposes. Research data and methods. For the GIS Project of the Victoria Lake region we used following thematic data available: Shape files of administrative boundaries (ArcGIS compatible format .shp), separately for Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Each .shp file has also additional supporting files like as .shx and .prj, which show additional information about projection and metadata. UNEP grids for the same spatial extent of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Precipitation climatic data in text format, containing meteorological data in digital format: precipitation values in different months and years. The initial climatic data were in ASCII format which is text recording of the values of the annual precipitation for the whole Africa continent. Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) showing relief characteristics and elevation of the research area. Data are taken from USGS website. 2 tiles of the USGS DEM map format (single file set of ASCII-encoded text containing numbers of coordinates and elevations) Initial Geographic reference was WGS84, projection - Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area, which is common for each DEM USGS tile. The metadata with geo-referencing information for the images is available in .prj files. There are two available data of GTopo30 - E020N40.DEM covering territory of Kenya and Uganda, and E020S10.DEM showing south-eastern part of Tanzania. DEM files contain horizontal grid spacing of 30 arc seconds (approximately 1 kilometre). Land Cover data in raster format which is stored in .bsq format: IGBP.bsq. This file is a part of the global land cover characteristics database. The pixel values correspond to class numbers defined in the appropriate land cover classification scheme legend. Land Cover data projected in the Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area projection for the Africa land cover characteristics. Population data were downloaded from the UNEP website. They contain raster data for the whole Africa continent. We have chosen data of population for two years for our research – 1990 and 2000 years. Each dataset had two different files – population density (popd00 and popd90 respectively) and population total. Additional, miscellaneous data set, containing Landsat ETM+ images in MrSid format - S-36-00_2000.sid. The results consists in the geospatial analysis of the Victoria Lake presented on the poster.