By increased rural-urban migration in many African countries, the assessment of changes in catchment hydrologic responses due to urbanization is critical for water resource planning and management. This paper assesses hydrological impacts of urbanization on two medium-sized Zimbabwean catchments (Mukuvisi and Marimba) for which changes in land cover by urbanization were determined through Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images for the years 1986, 1994 and 2008. Impact assessments were done through hydrological modeling by a topographically driven rainfall-runoff model (TOPMODEL).

Land degradation through extensification of agriculture and overgrazing is an increasing problem across large expanses of the Ethiopian highlands that give rise to a loss in a range of ecosystem services. Ecological restoration through exclosure establishment has become increasingly important approach to reversing degraded ecosystems in Ethiopia and particularly in the Amhara regional state, northern Ethiopia.

The anthropocene is the age where human influences are determining the development of the planet’s ecosystems and thus the bio-physical basis of future human civilisations. Today China has become the world’s largest economy and its worst polluter with per capita greenhouse gas emissions surpassing the EU average, the world’s largest consumer of all kinds of resources.