The land resources data base contains several layers of physical environmental resources which allow the creation of unique ecological land units (agro-ecological cells) within which soil, landform and climatic conditions are quantified. This information, compiled at the national level by province and district, constitutes the inventory of the physical land resources.
The climatic resources part consist of three seperate thematic layers: the thermal zones layer, the length of growing period zones layer and the pattern of number of growing period zones layer. The climatic resources inventory is described in Section 5.2.
The soil resources layer includes information on soils, landform and geology/parent materials. The soil resources inventory is described in Section 6.2.
Additional layers on land uses and administrative subdivisions have been added. These layers contain cash crop zones, forest zones, parkland areas, irrigated areas, tse-tse infestation areas, and province and district boundaries.
The individual layers have been digitized. The digitized information derived from the individual layers has been converted to a data base of 576,072 grid cells. Each grid cell (one millimeter square) corresponds to 100 ha.
Subsequent to digitizing, the soil map unit composition of each mapping unit and the associated edaphic conditions have been incorporated.
The make-up of the national land resources data base is schematically presented in Figure 3.1. The computerized land resources data base for Kenya records total extents of about 91 000 unique agro-ecological cells. Each cell contains information on:
- Sequence number (NUM)
- Province (PRV)
- District (DIST)
- Thermal Zone (TZ)
- Length of Growing Period Zone (LGP)
- Pattern of Length of Growing Period Zone (PAT)
- Soil Mapping Unit (MPU)
- Landform (LNDFM)
- Geology/Parent Material (GEO)
- Soil Unit (SOIL)
FIGURE 3.1
Make-up of land resources data base
- Soil Texture (TXT)
- Soil Phases (PHASES)
- Cash Crop Zone (CROP)
- Forest Zone (FOR )
- Irrigation Scheme (IRR)
- Tse-tse Infestation Areas (TSE)
- Parkland Area (PARK)
- Extent in hectares (EXTENT).
The land resources data base is available in the form of a grid based geographic information system (GIS). For details, reference should be made to Technical Annex 7.
