ABSTRACT
This paper aimed to investigate the spatio-temporal occurrences of temperature and rainfall variation across agro-ecological zones in Ondo State, Nigeria, over the period of 39 years (1979 and 2018). Ground-based rainfall and temperature series data for Ondo State were sourced across two-stations each in the three agro-ecological zones (Guinea Savanna, Rainforest and Mangrove Swamp). The Mann Kendall slope methods was adopted to determine the trends in the rainfall and temperature data. kriging interpolation to show the spatial variation in both rainfall and temperature on a four-decade spread (1979– 1988, 1989–1998, 1999–2008, and 2009-2018) across the three agro-ecological zones. The result showed that in the agroecological zones of Ondo State, temperature and rainfall variation is more pronounced than envisaged at the rates of +0.4 °C to +1.5 °C and -0.5 °C to -0.8 °C, indicating increases and decreases in temperature across the stations, while rainfall showed consistent decline at the rate of -8.79 mm to -24.50 mm in the last four decades. The decline in rainfall is particularly worrisome for the rural agrarian communities in the agro-ecological zones due to their overdependence on rainfed agriculture. It is thus important that farmers in the respective agro-ecological zones look towards adopting drought-resilient seed and seedlings as well as high-yielding varieties of crop seedlings amidst the recent trend in shortage of rainfall.
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