Analyzing changes in land use practices and livelihoods in the Bhungroo irrigation technology Volta basin piloted sites, West Mamprusi District, Ghana

This study focused on assessing agricultural land use practices and livelihood changes as affected by long-term erratic rainfall patterns characterized by flood and drought cycles in the Bhungroo Irrigation Technology (BIT) piloted sites, West Mamprusi upper and lower catchment area in Ghana. The study defined environmental flow restoration (EFR) factors based on irrigation water demand, natural outflows (e.g. drainage, seepage and percolation), evaporative outflows, rainfall and stored water. Agro-ecological resilience (AER) factors included flooding intensity, crop production under dry season, flood recession, and irrigation, and livestock as well as mixed farming was assessed. The framework of Evaluating Sustainable Land Management (FESLM) was utilized to assess changes in land use and trends analyzed by the Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) technique. The main observed land use practices were subsistence cultivation with limited irrigation 72.8%, subsistence cultivation without irrigation 64.5% and livestock keeping with some cultivation 87.4%. Corresponding land use mean weights impact on the EFR and AER were 9, 9, 8, and 9, 8, 7 respectively. The study noted that precipitation was of higher significance than temperature in terms of hydro-climate determinants in both upper and lower catchment areas. Mean monthly precipitation amount and intensity were highest between June–July in the upper catchment while in the lower catchment it was between July–August. These months corresponded with high risk of flooding and waterlogging in both catchments. The opposite was observed in March with access to irrigation water being the most EFR factor influencing the resilience of BIT especially at the upper catchment area. In terms of academic contribution, this paper posits in the hydro-climatic context that excess pressure exerted from a combination of micronized factors such as waterlogging of farmlands, flood recession rate, irrigation capabilities, climate preparedness, adoption and transferability of innovations and scalability of climate innovations are likely be the critical elements which accelerate the climate vulnerability of arid and semi-arid catchment areas. Based on these observations, the study carefully recommends improved BIT infrastructure, including the integration of grundfos pumping systems, solar pay-as-you-go energy, MTN mobile payment systems, participatory decision support systems (PDSS), with improved awareness on determinants of EFR including crop-livestock integration in ecological organic agriculture as resilience building options.