5 and 3 acres on the Kenyan side and 0.5 and 6 acres in Tanzania. The majority also keep poultry, goats, cattle and dairy cows in varying small numbers. Fuel-wood is the primary energy source and water for domestic and

productive needs comes primarily TNF-alpha inhibitor from nearby rivers, streams and/or artificial ponds. Farmers also engage in a number of off-farm activities to obtain cash. Despite tremendous advances in agricultural science and technology, climate and weather are the most important variables in food production (Rosenzweig et al. 2001). Since rain-fed agriculture is the mainstay of peoples’ livelihoods in the study region, any change in the pattern of rainfall contributes to a destabilization of the food system, in terms of influencing production, use and/or access to food with potentially negative MGCD0103 feedbacks on livelihoods (Misselhorn 2004; Ingram et al. 2010). Grasping the dynamics of rainfall in the LVB is therefore fundamental to our understanding of how it induces changes in the coupled human–environment system. Locating exposures The bi-modal rainfall pattern constitutes a primary parameter around which agricultural and herding activities are organized in

the East African region (Smucker and Wisner 2008). This pattern is associated with interlinked, complex, and as yet not fully understood climate drivers Molecular motor such as the movements of the inter-tropical convergence zone, the large scale (African) monsoonal winds, El-Niňo Southern Batimastat solubility dmso Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena, the quasi-biennial oscillation, the meso-scale circulations and extra-tropical weather systems (Kizza et al. 2009). According to both elders and contemporary farmers, the long rainy season (masika) normally spans March–May, while October signals the onset of the short rainy season (vuri) that generally lasts until mid-December (field data, 2007–2010). During some periods, inter-annual rainfall variability

is extreme, leading to heavy downpours and/or prolonged dry periods, often linked to the ENSO (Ogallo 1997; McHugh 2006). Despite the generally complex climate parameters involved in analyzing rainfall dynamics in the LVB, recent regional climate studies have successfully identified an overall increasing trend indicating a rise in rainfall, specifically during the short rainy season (Kizza et al. 2009; Thornton et al. 2010). Our own analysis based on time series on monthly rainfall from two stations and used as a proxy for the study sites in Kenya and Tanzania, although not always uniform across the two, indicate a similar pattern, specifically during the short rainy season. Figure 3 illustrates this pattern (Fig.