sea level at Feira to c. 1000 m at its upper end. The Valley is hot, sparsely populated and tsetse-infested. It contains five game reserves which together cover some 15 000 km2 and have large numbers of elephant, buffalo, hippopotamus and impala, together with smaller numbers of other antelopes and zebra. There is no settlement or cultivation within the reserves. Information on the land resources of the Valley is sparse. The only attempt at a survey of the whole area is that of Trapnell, Martin & Allan (1950), though their map had to remain incomplete because in the early 1940s, when the survey was made, access was very difficult and their traverses therefore very far apart. It is now intended that a new and complete land resource inventory be prepared. The land will be classified and mapped, and its suitability for different purposes will be assessed. The land can then be apportioned appropriately for different uses. In particular it is hoped to be able to manage the game reserves better and to control overgrazing and overbrowsing, which are locally serious. Our aim in this paper is to outline the requirements of the survey, to indicate which of the several possible approaches we believe to be the most valuable, and to summarize the results of preliminary studies of a test area that support this approach.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Astle et al. (1969) studied this question.