B P International

Lake Victoria region has the highest HIV prevalence in East Africa due to concentration of commercial farms, fishing and mining that escalate social dynamic interactions. High rates of HIV transmission and poor working conditions further amplify the risk of TB in the region. Local populations in the area have opted different alternatives among which medicinal plants are popular for managing health conditions related to the respiratory diseases. Consequently, selective consumerism of plants for managing respiratory diseases profoundly affects diversity of priority medicinal plants. Detection of the effect of selective consumerism to the preferred plants in-situ is not instantaneous unless much focused approach is employed. In this study, an ethnobotanical assessment criterion was used to assess and identify conservation status for most useful plants. To achieve this, open ended questionnaires and focus group discussions were used for collecting ethnobotanical information from 37 trad...

Understanding of different levels of soil calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), potassium (K), sodium (Na), cation exchange capacity (CEC), and percentage base saturation (BS), is important in the management of forest ecosystems. However, there is limited documentation on the status of these elements in the undisturbed forest sites (CFS) crop-agriculture (ADS) and livestock grazing (DGS) disturbances in the tropical coastal forests. This chapter attempts to address this deficit by presenting soil fertility based on exchangeable bases’ status and variations across undisturbed forest sites (used as a control), crop-agriculture and livestock disturbed sites in the coastal zone of Tanzania. The chapter aims to add knowledge on the management of tropical coastal forests. Indeed, this chapter shows that crop-agriculture and livestock grazing disturb soil chemical properties in tropical coastal forests. Therefore, it is essential to protect undisturbed forest while putting more efforts to restore ...