Refine
Year of publication
- 2006 (2) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (1)
- Conference Proceeding (1)
Language
- English (2)
Institute
- Institut für Biochemie und Biologie (2) (remove)
In semiarid savannas of Southern Africa current land use practices and climate change may lead to substantial changes of vegetation structure in the near future, however uncertainty remains about the potential consequences and the magnitude of change. In this paper we study the impact of climate change, cattle grazing, and wood cutting on shrub cover dynamics in savannas of the southern Kalahari. We use an established savanna ecosystem model to simulate landscape dynamics in terms of rainfall, fire and distribution of the dominant tree Acacia erioloba. We then incorporate these data into a spatial population model of the common, fleshy-fruited shrub Grewia flava and investigate shrub cover dynamics for a period of 100 years. Depending on the intensity of commercial wood cutting practices tree removal of A. erioloba led to a strong decline of the G. flava population, as shrub recruitment is concentrated in tree sub-canopies due to bird-mediated seed dispersal. Under climate change shrub cover slightly decreased with decreasing precipitation and was unchanged with increase in precipitation variability. Contrarily, grazing by cattle strongly increased shrub cover and facilitated shrub encroachment because of cattle-induced distribution of G. flava seeds into the matrix vegetation. Knowledge of the latter process is particularly important because shrub invasion is a major concern for conservation and savanna rangeland management as a result of its adverse effects on livestock carrying capacity and biodiversity
Decisions for the conservation of biodiversity and sustainable management of natural resources are typically related to large scales, i.e. the landscape level. However, understanding and predicting the effects of land use and climate change on scales relevant for decision-making requires to include both, large scale vegetation dynamics and small scale processes, such as soil-plant interactions. Integrating the results of multiple BIOTA subprojects enabled us to include necessary data of soil science, botany, socio-economics and remote sensing into a high resolution, process-based and spatially-explicit model. Using an example from a sustainably-used research farm and a communally used and degraded farming area in semiarid southern Namibia we show the power of simulation models as a tool to integrate processes across disciplines and scales.