Maro G.P.^1,, Mbwambo S.G.¹, Monyo H.E.¹, Mosi E.J.¹

Most major agricultural research stations in Tanzania have adopted the geographic information systems (GIS). Tanzania Coffee Research Institute (TaCRI) was late to come on board because its establishment does not include a cartographic unit. Collaboration with TARI-Mlingano in 2008/09 enabled the initiation of a mini-GIS unit at Lyamungu. One of its tasks was to develop digital maps of the TaCRI substations scattered over major coffee zones in Tanzania. Four substations were chosen to start with. For Lyamungu, a non-georeferenced paper map was scanned and 8 control points selected, whose x-y coordinates were taken with a GPS tool. They were loaded into Excel spreadsheet and saved as a .csv file. The image and the point shapefile were properly aligned in ArcMap 10.7.1 and digitized onscreen. Ugano, Mbimba and Mwayaya maps were digitized from satellite images remotely sensed with Google Earth Pro, saved first as .kmz files, and converted in ArcMap to features and later to shapefiles. Land use was elaborated using expert knowledge. The resultant was the first ever digital maps of the four substations. Created shapefile layers included boundary, rivers, roads and fields (categorized as coffee land, other crops, forest reserve, other reserves, wetlands and waterbodies, nurseries and general infrastructure). Land use per category showed to have a bearing on station history, current land ownership status and staff population. Percentage land assigned to coffee decreased in the order Lyamungu > Mwayaya > Ugano > Mbimba. This work has formally introduced TaCRI to the GIS world – an important step as GIS is becoming ubiquitous in global research, planning and problem solving. It was also a very good starting experience with ArcMap and Google Earth.

Digital maps, GIS techniques, land use mapping, remote sensing, TaCRI stations