The ongoing fragmentation of pastoral drylands is a matter of concern throughout Africa. Using the example of rangelands in northern Baringo County, Kenya, that were under uniform pastoral use until the late twentieth century, we trace land-use and land-cover changes (LULCCs) since the 1980s. Based on ethnographic, historical, and remote sensing data, we show how bush encroachment and dryland farming have led to the increasing modification and conversion of formerly open rangelands and the diversification of livelihoods. These LULCC dynamics are related to and driven not only by internal processes of socioeconomic change (e.g., sedentarization, changing rangeland management practices, growing markets for small stock, increasing stratification and cultural differentiation) but also by ecological processes such as wildlife defaunation and ecological invasions. Based on our findings, we suggest that a socioecological approach to Kopytoff’s notion of the internal African frontier can be helpful in framing these LULCC-related dynamics.

牧区旱地的持续分裂是整个非洲令人关切的问题。以肯尼亚巴林戈县北部的牧场为例，这些牧场直到 20 世纪后期都处于统一的牧区使用状态，我们追踪了自 1980 年代以来的土地利用和土地覆盖变化 (LULCC)。基于人种学、历史和遥感数据，我们展示了灌木丛侵占和旱地农业如何导致以前开放牧场的日益改造和转变以及生计的多样化。这些 LULCC 动态不仅与社会经济变化的内部过程（例如，定居、不断变化的牧场管理实践、小型牲畜市场的增长、分层和文化分化），但也受到生态过程的影响，例如野生动物的动物区系丧失和生态入侵。根据我们的研究结果，我们建议对 Kopytoff 的非洲内部边界概念的社会生态学方法有助于构建这些与 LULCC 相关的动态。