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Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa

While global deforestation induced by human land use has been quantified, the drivers and extent of simultaneous woody plant encroachment (WPE) into open areas are only regionally known. WPE has important consequences for ecosystem functioning, global carbon balances and human economies. Here we rep...

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Autores principales: Venter, Z. S., Cramer, M. D., Hawkins, H.-J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5995890/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29891933
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04616-8
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author Venter, Z. S.
Cramer, M. D.
Hawkins, H.-J.
author_facet Venter, Z. S.
Cramer, M. D.
Hawkins, H.-J.
author_sort Venter, Z. S.
collection PubMed
description While global deforestation induced by human land use has been quantified, the drivers and extent of simultaneous woody plant encroachment (WPE) into open areas are only regionally known. WPE has important consequences for ecosystem functioning, global carbon balances and human economies. Here we report, using high-resolution satellite imagery, that woody vegetation cover over sub-Saharan Africa increased by 8% over the past three decades and that a diversity of drivers, other than CO(2), were able to explain 78% of the spatial variation in this trend. A decline in burned area along with warmer, wetter climates drove WPE, although this has been mitigated in areas with high population growth rates, and high and low extremes of herbivory, specifically browsers. These results confirm global greening trends, thereby bringing into question widely held theories about declining terrestrial carbon balances and desert expansion. Importantly, while global drivers such as climate and CO(2) may enhance the risk of WPE, managing fire and herbivory at the local scale provides tools to mitigate continental WPE.
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spelling pubmed-59958902018-06-13 Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa Venter, Z. S. Cramer, M. D. Hawkins, H.-J. Nat Commun Article While global deforestation induced by human land use has been quantified, the drivers and extent of simultaneous woody plant encroachment (WPE) into open areas are only regionally known. WPE has important consequences for ecosystem functioning, global carbon balances and human economies. Here we report, using high-resolution satellite imagery, that woody vegetation cover over sub-Saharan Africa increased by 8% over the past three decades and that a diversity of drivers, other than CO(2), were able to explain 78% of the spatial variation in this trend. A decline in burned area along with warmer, wetter climates drove WPE, although this has been mitigated in areas with high population growth rates, and high and low extremes of herbivory, specifically browsers. These results confirm global greening trends, thereby bringing into question widely held theories about declining terrestrial carbon balances and desert expansion. Importantly, while global drivers such as climate and CO(2) may enhance the risk of WPE, managing fire and herbivory at the local scale provides tools to mitigate continental WPE. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-06-11 /pmc/articles/PMC5995890/ /pubmed/29891933 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04616-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Venter, Z. S.
Cramer, M. D.
Hawkins, H.-J.
Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa
title Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa
title_full Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa
title_fullStr Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa
title_full_unstemmed Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa
title_short Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa
title_sort drivers of woody plant encroachment over africa
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5995890/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29891933
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04616-8
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