First couple of days in Kenya
It was a long 36 hours of traveling from Bellingham to Kisumu, Kenya, for our pre-meeting field trip to tour the Lake Victoria Basin Regional Demonstration site (at least, the Kenyan portion) of the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS). This is leading up to the INMS Joint Meeting 4 in Nairobi this week. (There’s a surprisingly good overview of the geography, history, and environmental problems at Lake Victoria – the headwaters of the White Nile – on Wikipedia.)
I arrived in Kisumu mid-day on Friday, April 26, and after a nice welcome dinner with guests from the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC), the tour started Sat. morning. We toured the West Kanu Irrigation Scheme, set up primarily for rice farming, then drove another couple of hours out to see an atmospheric monitoring site at Mbita. On the way, we saw a lot of Kenyan landscape. This, however, is no longer the realm of lions, zebras and giraffes – the Lake Victoria Basin has the highest population densities outside of any major watershed in Africa. Almost every square meter is being used for grazing, agriculture, or living – with subsequent degradation of water quality throughout. Researchers are trying to figure out how to reduce nutrient pollution but still maintain agricultural production to support the population.
