Building African Ecosystem Research Network for sustaining local ecosystem goods and services

Abstract

Abstract:A new form of producing and sharing knowledge has emerged as an international (United States of America, Asia, and Europe) research collaboration, known as the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Although Africa boasts rich biodiversity, including endemic species, it lacks the long-term initiatives to underpin sustainable biodiversity managements. At present, climate change may exacerbate hunger and poverty concerns in addition to resulting in ecosystem degradation, land use change, and other threats in Africa. Therefore, ecosystem monitoring was suggested to understanding the effects of climate change and setting strategies to mitigate these changes. This paper aimed to investigate ecosystem monitoring ground sites and address their coverage gaps in Africa to provide a foundation for optimizing the African Ecosystem Research Network (AERN) ground sites. The geographic coordinates and characteristics of ground sites-based ecosystem monitoring were collected from various networks aligned with the LTER implementation in Africa. Additionally, climatic data and biodiversity distribution maps were retrieved from various sources. These data were used to assess the size of existing ground sites and the gaps in description, ecosystems and biomes. The results reveal that there were 1089 sites established by various networks. Among these sites, 30.5%, 27.5%, and 28.8% had no information of area, year of establishment, current status, respectively. However, 68.0% of them had an area equal to or greater than 1 km 2 . Sites were created progressively over the course of the years, with 68.9% being created from 2000 to 2005. To date, only 41.5% of the sites were operational. The sites were scattered across Africa, but they were concentrated in Eastern and Southern Africa. The unbalanced distribution pattern of the sites left Central and Northern Africa hardly covered, and many unique ecosystems in Central Africa were not included. To sustain these sites, the AERN should be based on operational sites, seeking secure funding by establishing multiple partnerships.

Climate change–drylands–food security nexus in Africa: From the perspective of technical advances, challenges, and opportunities

“…Long-term ecological research (LTER) is a method of assessing biophysical interactions with human activities and how they affect the ecological integrity, particularly environmental processes and humanity's carrying capacity (Vanderbilt and Gaiser, 2017). These networks deal with climate and anthropological impacts on grassland, forests, freshwater, deserts, coasts, and other ecosystems that span a wide topographical range (Yevide et al, 2015). Some ecosystem research networks (ERNs) have been established in Africa (Table 1).…”

Grassland cover declined in Southern Africa but increased in other African subcontinents in early 21st century

“…Africa is the second-largest continent in the world and occupies over 30 million km 2 , accounting for 6% and approximately 20% of the earth's total surface area and total land area, respectively (Bouvet et al, 2018;Nzabarinda et al, 2021;Yuan et al, 2022). According to the United Nations geographic classification scheme, the African continent has five subcontinents (West Africa, Central Africa, North Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa) (Yevide et al, 2015;Yuan et al, 2022) and comprises 54 countries. The shares of the total African land area by subcontinents include ~10% occupied by Southern Africa, ~20% occupied by Central Africa, ~12% occupied by East Africa, ~25% occupied by West Africa, and 27% occupied by North Africa (Yevide et al, 2015;Asenso Barnieh et al, 2020).…”

“…According to the United Nations geographic classification scheme, the African continent has five subcontinents (West Africa, Central Africa, North Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa) (Yevide et al, 2015;Yuan et al, 2022) and comprises 54 countries. The shares of the total African land area by subcontinents include ~10% occupied by Southern Africa, ~20% occupied by Central Africa, ~12% occupied by East Africa, ~25% occupied by West Africa, and 27% occupied by North Africa (Yevide et al, 2015;Asenso Barnieh et al, 2020).…”

“…Climate models have projected that Africa would experience different forms of climate changes (e.g., rising temperatures, rainfall intensification, rising CO2, and intensified drought) that could alter the structure and functioning of her grasslands in the 21 st century (James and Washington, 2013;Willis et al, 2013;Moncrieff et al, 2015;Yevide et al, 2015;Buhrmann et al, 2016).…”

Analysis of the Spatiotemporal Change in Land Surface Temperature for a Long-Term Sequence in Africa (2003–2017)

“…According to the United Nations geographic classification scheme, Africa was classified into five subregions (northern, western, central or middle, eastern and southern). The southern subregion is the smallest, and this subregion (10%) is very small compared to the northern region, which covers 27% of the total area [32]. To obtain more detail about the characteristics of LST in Africa, we classified North Africa into two regions (North Africa and northeastern Africa); thus, in this study, six subregions were used for the analysis of the LST (Figure 1).…”