The effects of forest removal on stream flows in Arror river basin

The book is about the impact of land-use changes on stream flows, the case of Arror river basin in Kenya. Changes in land use is a concern to many basin communities over the globe including Arror inhabitants since they claim it has an impact on stream flows in their basins. Hydro-meteorological data together with the area under different land use for the last four decades in the basin was used for analysis. From the analysis of land-use trends, forest cover reduced from 61%-43% during the last four decades with forest lands being converted to agriculture and settled areas. Data analysis was done by use of the HBV model. The model calibration results were however not good, a situation which was linked to lack of rainfall data representativeness in the basin. Future studies in the basin could explore the use of land satellite rainfall data to augment the rainfall data obtained from the relatively sparse rain gauge network in the basin, to get possible better model results.