Publication Date: 2023/12/14
Abstract: Most mountainous environments are repertoire of precious resources and characterized by many physical challenges but man has always adapted to these by his own strategies. The aim of the study was to examine man’s adaptation measures to the biophysical challenges on the eastern slope of Mount Cameroon. It was an observatory and explanatory study that adopted the mixed research design involving the use of qualitative and quantitative techniques. By the simple random sampling techniques, 200 households located on the eastern slope of the Mount Cameroon were selected as key informants. Primary data was extracted from them through questionnaires, interviews, interrogations and field surveys. More so, secondary data were gotten from published related articles, Newspapers, online and offline libraries. The collected data was inputted on Excel Version 20.0 and exported to SPSS Version 19 where it was analyzed through the inferential and descriptive statistical techniques. Frequencies, percentiles, ranges and relationships were then derived. Results show that there are two factors responsible for the occurrence of biophysical challenges on the eastern slope of the mount Cameroon, that is, the natural factors and to a larger extent the anthropogenic factors. The major physical challenges are steep slopes, landslide, soil erosion and climate variability. Man has adapted to these challenges by creating embankments, raising robot structures and planting trees. All these measures have been short-lived because of population concentration, low level of technology and increasing magnetudes of the challenges. The work concludes that the eastern slope is a warehouse of resources and recommends that holistic measures such as tree planting and land use planning be done to control the emerging challenges.
Keywords: Human adaptation measures, Biophysical constraints, eastern slope of mount Cameroon.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10422703
PDF: https://ijirst.demo4.arinfotech.co/assets/upload/files/IJISRT23NOV1752.pdf
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