The Borana rangelands of southern Ethiopia are characterised by extensive livestock production in response to the area?s natural characteristics - aggregate mean rainfall ranges between 300 and 900 mm per annum with high seasonal and inter-annual variability. Though traditionally transhumant pastoralists, the Boranas have recently increased their reliance on crops, with evidence of communal pastures becoming either privatised, or accessible to only a small sub-group of individuals or households.

The Kuri cattle breed is found on the shores and islands of Lake Chad. Its main habitat is in southern Chad and north-eastern Nigeria but the breed is also found in northern Cameroon, in Niger and, to a limited extent, in the Central African Republic. The Kuri are also known as the Baharie, Bare, Borrie, Boudouma, Dongolé, Koubouri, Buduma or White Lake Chad. The importance of the Kuri lies not only in its unique physical characteristics but also in its meat and milk production potentials. The breed is so acclimatised to the environs of Lake Chad that it is unable to survive elsewhere.

Improved understandings of the agricultural and range ecologies of semi-arid Africa require better information on the spatiotemporal distribution of domestic livestock across agropastoral landscapes. An empirical GIS-based approach was developed for estimating distributions of herded livestock across three agropastoral territories (around 100 km2 each) over a two-year period.