‘Mazingira’ is the Swahili word for ‘environment’. The Mazingira Centre is an environmental research and educational facility established by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi. Research at the Mazingira Centre focuses on understanding and managing the environmental footprint of livestock systems without hampering productivity. Read more here
Mazingira Centre hosts students with various levels of education to create awareness and learning on the process of greenhouse gas measurements and what this entails. Read more here
The Mazingira Centre consists of a laboratory equipped with gas chromatography and laser spectroscopy instruments Read more here
A study by researchers at the International ILRI, and partners in Germany investigated the effects of moderate to severe levels of feeding below an animal’s energy requirement on enteric methane production in young Boran steers. The study found that methane produced by an animal per unit feed intake increases as the amount of feed consumed by an animal decreases. Continue reading
The Restoring African Degraded Landscaped (ReDEAL) project is an interdisciplinary and collaboratively coordinated research project that aims at helping smallholder to avoid further and possibly reverse land degradation without compromising livelihoods and food production. The project partners are Lancaster University, University of Manchester, CIFOR, ILRI and the university of Kabianga. Part of the project is … Continue reading
Originally posted on ILRI news:
https://flic.kr/p/2iFrCNC Jimmy Smith (centre), Dieter Schillinger (second right) and Sita Ghimire (right) with Kenya government officials who recently visited the Kapiti Research Station (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu). Three senior Kenya government officials visited the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) Kapiti Research Station on 18 Mar 2020. Ambassador Samuel Gitonga, director…
Originally posted on ILRI news:
Livestock production is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. But global estimates of these emissions are based on emission factors from developed countries. There is limited data on emissions from livestock systems in developing countries, which has contributed to a lagging of climate-change adaptation and mitigation…
Originally posted on ILRI news:
One of the most important and revealing attributes of livestock is their live weight. This single measurement can help farmers effectively manage their stock and is critical for making informed decisions on aspects of animal production such as feed rations, market value, administration of veterinary drugs and mating times. For…
In February 2020 a team from ILRI’s Mazingira Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London and Cambridge University went on a trip through Southern Kenya to sample air. Sampling air may sound arbitrary yet the bigger aim of this field campaign was to derive samples from livestock including cattle, sheep, goats and camels as well as … Continue reading
Originally posted on Sustainable livestock systems:
Livestock production is the main source of livelihood in the pastoral lands of Afar in northeastern Ethiopia. But the traditional livestock-keeping way of life there has been severely affected by climate change in recent years. Rainfall has become unpredictable, and the area has been hit by unprecedented droughts and…
Originally posted on ILRI news:
It is hard to overstate the role that the livestock sector plays in ensuring food security in sub-Saharan Africa. The sector provides a vital source of income to most of the rural poor. Livestock production also provides nutritional benefits to people through their milk, meat and eggs, which are protein…
At the end of February 2019, two students from the Braeburn International School Arusha joined the Mazingira Team for one week. They were not just looking over our shoulders to learn about what a typical environmental laboratory looks alike but actually got quite some hands-on experience. Read their short report below: By Melchim Roothaert and … Continue reading
Besides the scaling of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using models (see our previous training event here) there is a crucial need to build capacity on core analytics for GHG concentrations measurements such as gas chromatography. Based on the available instruments within ILRI’s Mazingira Centre, local universities (Maseno University) and national research centres (KALRO) we invited … Continue reading
Mazingira Centre 