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Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history

The populations of light-demanding trees that dominate the canopy of central African forests are now aging. Here, we show that the lack of regeneration of these populations began ca. 165 ya (around 1850) after major anthropogenic disturbances ceased. Since 1885, less itinerancy and disturbance in th...

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Autores principales: Morin-Rivat, Julie, Fayolle, Adeline, Favier, Charly, Bremond, Laurent, Gourlet-Fleury, Sylvie, Bayol, Nicolas, Lejeune, Philippe, Beeckman, Hans, Doucet, Jean-Louis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5241113/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093097
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20343
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author Morin-Rivat, Julie
Fayolle, Adeline
Favier, Charly
Bremond, Laurent
Gourlet-Fleury, Sylvie
Bayol, Nicolas
Lejeune, Philippe
Beeckman, Hans
Doucet, Jean-Louis
author_facet Morin-Rivat, Julie
Fayolle, Adeline
Favier, Charly
Bremond, Laurent
Gourlet-Fleury, Sylvie
Bayol, Nicolas
Lejeune, Philippe
Beeckman, Hans
Doucet, Jean-Louis
author_sort Morin-Rivat, Julie
collection PubMed
description The populations of light-demanding trees that dominate the canopy of central African forests are now aging. Here, we show that the lack of regeneration of these populations began ca. 165 ya (around 1850) after major anthropogenic disturbances ceased. Since 1885, less itinerancy and disturbance in the forest has occurred because the colonial administrations concentrated people and villages along the primary communication axes. Local populations formerly gardened the forest by creating scattered openings, which were sufficiently large for the establishment of light-demanding trees. Currently, common logging operations do not create suitable openings for the regeneration of these species, whereas deforestation degrades landscapes. Using an interdisciplinary approach, which included paleoecological, archaeological, historical, and dendrological data, we highlight the long-term history of human activities across central African forests and assess the contribution of these activities to present-day forest structure and composition. The conclusions of this sobering analysis present challenges to current silvicultural practices and to those of the future. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20343.001
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spelling pubmed-52411132017-01-18 Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history Morin-Rivat, Julie Fayolle, Adeline Favier, Charly Bremond, Laurent Gourlet-Fleury, Sylvie Bayol, Nicolas Lejeune, Philippe Beeckman, Hans Doucet, Jean-Louis eLife Ecology The populations of light-demanding trees that dominate the canopy of central African forests are now aging. Here, we show that the lack of regeneration of these populations began ca. 165 ya (around 1850) after major anthropogenic disturbances ceased. Since 1885, less itinerancy and disturbance in the forest has occurred because the colonial administrations concentrated people and villages along the primary communication axes. Local populations formerly gardened the forest by creating scattered openings, which were sufficiently large for the establishment of light-demanding trees. Currently, common logging operations do not create suitable openings for the regeneration of these species, whereas deforestation degrades landscapes. Using an interdisciplinary approach, which included paleoecological, archaeological, historical, and dendrological data, we highlight the long-term history of human activities across central African forests and assess the contribution of these activities to present-day forest structure and composition. The conclusions of this sobering analysis present challenges to current silvicultural practices and to those of the future. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20343.001 eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017-01-17 /pmc/articles/PMC5241113/ /pubmed/28093097 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20343 Text en © 2017, Morin-Rivat et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Morin-Rivat, Julie
Fayolle, Adeline
Favier, Charly
Bremond, Laurent
Gourlet-Fleury, Sylvie
Bayol, Nicolas
Lejeune, Philippe
Beeckman, Hans
Doucet, Jean-Louis
Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history
title Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history
title_full Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history
title_fullStr Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history
title_full_unstemmed Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history
title_short Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history
title_sort present-day central african forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5241113/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093097
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20343
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