Fig 1.
Map of the study area showing the location of the livestock study sites in the four regions in the Mara River basin, Kenya.
The MMNR sites are within the Maasai Mara National Reserve.
Fig 2.
Livestock watering points during monitoring of behaviour in the upper Mara River Basin (a, b and c) and lower basin in the Talek Region (d, e and f) during the wet (a, b and c) and dry (c, e and f) seasons.
Fig 3.
Livestock behaviour (time spent in the watering points, number of cattle per herd, % defecation and % urination) in the upper Mara River basin and lower basin in the Talek region during the wet and dry seasons.
Table 1.
Sizes of livestock watering points and total number of cattle that visited watering points in the Mara River basin, Kenya during the dry and wet seasons.
Table 2.
Summary of generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs) used to determine the effect of the river system (region) and seasonality (wet and dry seasons) livestock characteristics: Time (minutes) spent at watering points, number of cattle per herd, percentage of cattle defecating or urinating in the river.
The ‘full’ model included the river or region (Amala, Nyangores and Talek), season (dry vs. wet) and river X season interaction as fixed effects and watering point as a random effect.
Table 3.
Mean (±SD) quality (C: N: P ratio) of cattle dung and urine and hippo dung in different regions in the Mara River basin, Kenya.
Table 4.
Per capita loading rates for organic matter (OM), carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) through egestion and excretion by cattle determined by the metabolism model and direct method for the Mara River basin, Kenya.
95% confidence intervals for cattle dung loading rates are provided in brackets.
Table 5.
Median loading rates of organic matter (dung) and nutrients (C, N and P) by cattle in the Mara River basin based on the metabolism model in comparison with published loading rates for hippopotamus.
Fig 4.
Changes in in-situ physico-chemical parameters during different times of the day at livestock watering points in the Mara River basin, Kenya.
The different times correspond to diel (morning, noon/mid-day and evening) variation in the number of livestock visiting watering points.
Fig 5.
Changes in nutrient concentrations during different times of the day at livestock watering points in the Mara River basin, Kenya.
The different times correspond to diel (morning, noon/mid-day and evening) variation in the number of livestock visiting watering points.
Table 6.
Mean (±SD) variation in water quality variables and nutrient concentrations in the water column and sediments at the upstream and downstream river reaches of livestock watering sites in the Talek River, a tributary of the Mara River.