Fourteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Climate change impacts through erratic rainfall and temperature have the potential to affect wildlife population in parks and reserves. These parks and reserves are critical in supporting wildlife tourism. Possible impacts of erratic rainfall and temperature patterns on vegetation and wildlife population in Maasai Mara National Reserve (MMNR) were investigated. Explanatory research design including GIS and Earth observation technologies were adopted. Vegetation cover changes were ascertained by satellite imagery using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) method from (1975 to 2018). The Raw Landsat data was processed to generate NDVI from Erdas Imagine Software. Geographical representation of the NDVI was produced by ArcGis. The mean annual rainfall and temperature patterns for the period 1977-2016 were analyzed by time series. Findings reveal that rainfall and temperature variations affect wildlife populations by controlling vegetation distribution as there could be other factors too. Also, Elephant, Wildebeest and Rhino population declined with declines in NDVI as well as rainfall patterns. Therefore, extremely high and low rainfall trends characterized by floods and drought result in declines in vegetation and water. This results to starvation of wildlife and increase wildlife mortality. With declines in Wildlife population, wildlife tourism is highly likely to be negatively affected as tourists could prefer other destinations with abundant wildlife. Kenya Wildlife Service needs to adopt emerging technologies to locate carnivorous wildlife that are undercover during the day and can not be counted. More importantly, focus on robust Wildlife conservation models under changing climatic conditions.