Fire is the most frequent disturbance in the Ericaceous Belt ( ca 3000–4300 m.a.s.l.), one of the most important plant communities of tropical African mountains. Through resprouting after fire, Erica establishes a positive fire feedback under certain burning regimes. However, present-day human activity in the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia includes fire and grazing systems that may have a negative impact on the resilience of the ericaceous ecosystem. Current knowledge of Erica –fire relationships is based on studies of modern vegetation, lacking a longer time perspective that can shed light on baseline conditions for the fire feedback. We hypothesize that fire has influenced Erica communities in the Bale Mountains at millennial time-scales. To test this, we (1) identify the fire history of the Bale Mountains through a pollen and charcoal record from Garba Guracha, a lake at 3950 m.a.s.l., and (2) describe the long-term bidirectional feedback between wildfire and Erica, which may control the ecosystem's resilience. Our results support fire occurrence in the area since ca 14 000 years ago, with particularly intense burning during the early Holocene, 10.8–6.0 cal ka BP. We show that a positive feedback between Erica abundance and fire occurrence was in operation throughout the Lateglacial and Holocene, and interpret the Ericaceous Belt of the Ethiopian mountains as a long-term fire resilient ecosystem. We propose that controlled burning should be an integral part of landscape management in the Bale Mountains National Park.

Knowledge coproduction that draws on local and scientific knowledge presents opportunities for more holistic understanding of environmental change. We describe our use of a multiple-evidence based approach to investigate the causes and consequences of environmental change in a community-protected grassland and its surrounding landscape in the Ethiopian highlands. We explore the interaction of biophysical change (precipitation and vegetation) and social change (political and management institutions), and discuss potential impacts for ecosystem service provisioning. We quantified current distributions of locally defined land use/cover classes using a supervised classification, with an overall accuracy of 87.1%. Local community members then described and ranked the ecosystem services associated with each land class according to their perceived importance for society. Vegetation and precipitation changes were assessed using satellite time series beginning in the early 1980s, while local narratives describe changes back to the 1970s. The knowledge coproduction process brought together ethnographic and remote sensing approaches, revealing both complementary and contradictory findings across knowledge systems. Results with high agreement across knowledge systems clarify and reinforce understanding of certain threats and changes to the area, such as the rapidly declining native forests, the disappearing belg rainy season (p = 0.01), and the impact of insecure land tenure on natural resource extraction. Compelling areas of disagreement point to topics in need of further investigation, including increased attention to the spatial and temporal variability of change across a seemingly homogeneous cultural landscape, and the process of shrub encroachment into the protected grassland.

The aim of this research is to investigate the patterns of vascular plant species richness, diversity, and distribution along an elevation gradient in the Abune Yosef mountain range, Ethiopia. Preferential systematic sampling was employed to collect vegetation and environmental data along the elevation gradient. We found that plant species richness declines monotonically from low to high elevations. Specifically, vascular plant species richness and diversity were lower in the Afroalpine grassland (high elevation) than in the Dry evergreen Afromontane forest and Ericaceous forest (low elevations). In contrast, endemic vascular plant richness was significantly higher in the Afroalpine grassland than in the Dry evergreen Afromontane forest and Ericaceous forest. Elevation showed a significant impact on the richness, diversity, and endemism of vascular plants. According to Sørensen's coefficient, the similarity between Dry evergreen Afromontane forest and Ericaceous forest vegetation types is higher (32%) than the similarity between Ericaceous forest and Afroalpine grassland (18%). Only 5% similarity was recorded between the Dry evergreen Afromontane forest and Afroalpine grassland. Growth forms showed different elevational richness patterns. Trees and liana increased monotonically up to 3300 m. Shrub and herb richness patterns followed a hump-shaped and inverted hump-shaped pattern along the elevation gradient. The elevation patterns of vascular plant species richness, diversity, and growth form in the present study may be attributed to differences in management intensity, spatial heterogeneity, microclimatic variations, and anthropogenic disturbances.