Investigating criteria for valuation of forage resources by local agro-pastoralists in West Africa: using quantitative ethnoecological approach

Table 3 The topmost 15 local valuation criteria provided by local agro-pastoralists and their respective cognitive salience indices (CSIs) for rainy season, dry season, cattle, goats, and sheep. The CSI values which are more than 10% of 10 topmost valuation criteria mentioned per each case (rainy season, dry season, cattle, goats, and sheep) are in italic figures

Local valuation criteria	Salience RS	Salience DS	Salience cattle	Salience goats	Salience sheep
Healthy growth of livestock	0.347	0.267	0.432	0.426	0.435
Availability of grasses	0.189
Animal desires	0.154	0.013
Phenological stage of grasses	0.118
Grow fat	0.104	0.078	0.123	0.115	0.117
Hunger	0.086	0.080	0.094	0.106	0.102
Energy provision	0.072	0.052	0.074	0.072	0.062
Natural food source	0.069	0.027	0.069	0.093	0.084
Taste	0.042	0.033	0.111	0.108	0.101
Milk production	0.024	0.02	0.032	0.027	0.030
Availability of crops and trees		0.133
Unavailability of fresh grasses		0.127
Nutrient (vitamins)			0.038	0.038	0.100
Good for our animals			0.034	0.034	0.034
Increased reproduction			0.021	0.027	0.016

ISSN: 1746-4269