Analysing and exploring land use decisions by smallholder agrowetland households in rural areas of East Africa

Small wetlands become increasingly important for agricultural production of rural households in sub-Saharan Africa. Changes in wetland systems are event driven and a cumulative result of individual farmer’s decisions of land uses. The overall objective of this dissertation was to develop a method that takes account of individual decision-making to study the current uses of wetlands by smallholder rural farmers and how wetlands may develop in the future. Diverse methods that include rapid rural and participative approaches, wetland mapping and classification, farm typologies, identification of drivers of land use change and farmers’ decision-making were used to develop a decision tree. This model was then used for scenario analyses...