Biogeography and Ecology of Miombo Woodlands

Ribeiro, Natasha; Miranda, Pedro Luiz Silva de; Timberlake, Jonathan

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-50104-4_2

Cited by 12 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 106 publications

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“…across a wide geographic and climatic envelope in northern Australia, to explore the consequences of fire management on savanna tree biomass. While recognizing that the Earth's tropical savanna systems encompass a variety of structural types and transitions, and occur under a range of edaphic and climatic (especially total rainfall and rainfall seasonality) conditions (Archibald et al, 2019; Scholes & Walker, 1993), our assessment has broad relevance to tropical savannas that, as in northern Australia, have extended dry seasons of >5 months and where fire severity increases throughout the dry season under deteriorating fire weather and fuel conditions (Gill et al, 1996; Russell‐Smith & Edwards, 2006), for example, the extensive miombo woodlands of southern Africa (Frost, 1996; Ribeiro et al, 2020; Russell‐Smith et al, 2021), Cerrado formations of South America (Coutinho, 1982), and dry dipterocarp forests of Southeast Asia (Stott, 1990).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a demographic model to project the long‐term effects of fire management on tree biomass in Australian savannas

Murphy

Whitehead

Evans

et al. 2023

Ecological Monographs

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Tropical savannas are characterized by high primary productivity and high fire frequency, such that much of the carbon captured by vegetation is rapidly returned to the atmosphere. Hence, there have been suggestions that management‐driven reductions in savanna fire frequency and/or severity could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon in tree biomass. However, a key knowledge gap is the extent to which savanna tree biomass will respond to modest shifts in fire regimes due to plausible, large‐scale management interventions. Here, we: (1) characterize relationships between the frequency and severity of fires and key demographic rates of savanna trees, based on long‐term observations in vegetation monitoring plots across northern Australia; (2) use these relationships to develop a process‐explicit demographic model describing the effects of fire on savanna tree populations; and (3) use the demographic model to address the question: to what extent is it feasible, through the strategic application of prescribed burning, to increase tree biomass in Australian tropical savannas? Our long‐term tree monitoring dataset included observations of 12,344 tagged trees in 236 plots, monitored for between 3 and 24 years. Analysis of this dataset showed that frequent high‐severity fires significantly reduced savanna tree recruitment, survival, and growth. Our demographic model suggested that: (1) despite the negative effects of frequent high‐severity fires on demographic rates, savanna tree biomass appears to be suppressed by only a relatively small amount by contemporary fire regimes, characterized by a mix of low‐ to high‐severity fires; and (2) plausible, management‐driven reductions in the frequency of high‐severity fires are likely to lead to increases in tree biomass of about 11.0 t DM ha−1 (95% CI: −1.2–20.8) over a century. Accounting for this increase in carbon storage could generate significant carbon credits, worth, on average, three times those generated annually by current greenhouse gas (methane and nitrous oxide) abatement projects, and has the potential to significantly increase the economic viability of fire/carbon projects, thereby promoting ecologically sustainable management of tropical savannas in Australia and elsewhere. This growing industry has the potential to bring much‐needed economic activity to savanna landscapes, without compromising important natural and cultural values.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a demographic model to project the long‐term effects of fire management on tree biomass in Australian savannas

Murphy

Whitehead

Evans

et al. 2023

Ecological Monographs

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“…Australian savannas are characterised by (i) higher arid limits (>250mm MAP) and dependency on prior fire occurrence, (ii) greater probability of fire occurrence across the entire precipitation gradient, (iii) strong correlations between fire occurrence and savanna extent, (iii) low mammalian populations that are resistant to extreme fire oscillations 6 , and (iv) higher mesic limits (2000mm MAP) where fires persist (Lehmann et al 2011) . The Miombo Woodlands are also characterised by spatial and temporal variation in greenhouse gas emissions driven by edaphic conditions rather than fire, making fire-related emissions calculations unreliable (Frost, 1996;Ribeiro et al 2020).…”

Section: Physical Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing fire regimes in East and Southern Africa’s savanna-protected areas: opportunities and challenges for indigenous-led savanna burning emissions abatement schemes

Croker

Woods

Kountouris

2023

Preprint

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Late dry-season wildfires in Sub-Saharan Africa’s savanna-protected areas are intensifying, increasing carbon emissions, and threatening ecosystem functioning. Addressing these challenges requires active local community engagement and support for wildfire policy. Savanna burning emissions abatement schemes first implemented in Northern Australia have been proposed as a community-based fire management strategy for East and Southern Africa’s protected areas to deliver win-win-win climate, social, and biodiversity benefits. Here we review and critically examine the literature exploring the design and application of savanna burning emissions abatement schemes in this region, characterising their contextual and implementation challenges. We show that the application of Northern Australian savanna burning methodologies in East and Southern Africa tend to adopt centrally determined objectives and market-based approaches that prioritise carbon revenue generation at the national level. The exclusive prescription of early-dry season burns in African mesic savannas prone to woody thickening can compromise savanna burning objectives to mitigate late-dry season wildfires and their greenhouse gas emissions in the long-term, as well as present multiple biodiversity trade-offs in the absence of formal metrics monitoring species’ responses to changes in fire regime. These features restrict indigenous participation and leadership in fire management, creating uncertainties over the opportunities for local income generation through carbon trading. Findings suggest that future savanna burning applications will need to address asymmetries between formal institutions and local land governance systems, explicitly acknowledging colonial legacies in institutional arrangements across protected areas and hierarchies in agrarian politics that threaten processes of equitable decentralisation in natural resource management. We argue that the effective transfer of the Northern Australian fire management model is limited by a lack of long-term ecological and emissions data, and political and institutional barriers, and hindered by the region’s recent colonial history, population growth, and consequences of rapid climatic change. To provide a community-based strategy, savanna burning schemes need to establish context specific legal frameworks and implement Free, Prior, and Informed Consent to safeguard the roles and responsibilities of indigenous and local people and their distribution of carbon benefits.

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“…UASs with ultra-high spatial resolution and flexibility of deployment are one of the emerging remote sensing tools for fire management [97,126,127]. Grass and woody plant leaf litter are the major fuel load for fires in the Miombo woodlands [128] that could be quantified using UASs to assess the risk and serve as an early warning indicator for the likelihood of a fire occurrence. In terms of fire prevention and early warnings, Ref.…”

Section: Fire-related Disturbancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite good intentions, the implementation of UAS regulations presents barriers to their successful application in forestry. A frequent challenge is the time needed to approve an application for flying permits [154], which might result in missing the timing of data collection for important forest-related research events in the Miombo woodlands (e.g., vegetation phenological events) [128]. The other challenge is the restriction that the UAS should be flown within the visual line of sight (VLOS) of the pilot, which restricts the area that can be flown per flight.…”

Section: Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Application of UASs in Forest Management and Monitoring: Challenges and Opportunities for Use in the Miombo Woodland

Shamaoma

Chirwa

Ramoelo

et al. 2022

Forests

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The Miombo woodland is the most extensive tropical woodland in south-central Africa. However, field sample plot data on forest cover changes, species distribution and carbon stocks in the Miombo ecoregion are inadequate for effective forest management. Owing to logistical challenges that come with field-based inventory methods, remote sensing plays an important role in supplementing field methods to fill in data gaps. Traditional satellite and manned aircraft remote sensing platforms have their own advantages and limitations. The advent of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) has made it possible to acquire forest data at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales. UASs are adaptable to various forest applications in terms of providing flexibility in data acquisition with different sensors (RGB, multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal and light detection and ranging (lidar)) at a convenient time. To highlight possible applications in the Miombo woodlands, we first provide an overview of the Miombo woodlands and recent progress in remote sensing with small UASs. An overview of some potential forest applications was undertaken to identify key prospects and challenges for UAS applications in the Miombo region, which will provide expertise and guidance upon which future applications in the Miombo woodlands should be based. While much of the potential of using UASs for forest data acquisition in the Miombo woodlands remains to be realized, it is likely that the next few years will see such systems being used to provide data for an ever-increasing range of forest applications.

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Biogeography and Ecology of Miombo Woodlands

Cited by 12 publications

References 106 publications

Using a demographic model to project the long‐term effects of fire management on tree biomass in Australian savannas

Using a demographic model to project the long‐term effects of fire management on tree biomass in Australian savannas

Changing fire regimes in East and Southern Africa’s savanna-protected areas: opportunities and challenges for indigenous-led savanna burning emissions abatement schemes

The Application of UASs in Forest Management and Monitoring: Challenges and Opportunities for Use in the Miombo Woodland

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