Drivers of forage provision and erosion control in West African savannas—A macroecological perspective

Guuroh, Reginald Tang; Ruppert, Jan C.; Ferner, Jessica; Canak, Kristijan; Schmidtlein, Sebastian; Linstädter, Anja

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2017.09.017

Cited by 25 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…Across broad natural gradients, multiple abiotic factors co-vary (e.g. De Frenne and others 2013, Guuroh et al 2018), as was also found in our study (i.e., positive correlation between precipitation and maximum temperature, and negative between precipitation and sand content in Global and positive correlation between maximum temperature and sand content in Patagonia). To account for the potential effects of co-varying drivers of SOC in our study, and to separate the independent effects of controlling factors on the variable of interest, we have included these correlations in our SEM.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Because more than 65% of drylands are used for grazing of domestic herbivores (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005), actions aiming to maintain and enhance plant productivity can also offset the negative impacts of climate change on ecosystem services and functions associated with SOC storage. These actions include the appropriate management of the livestock carrying capacity, the use of rotational grazing systems and the use of different aspects of plant diversity (functional vs. taxonomical) to keep rangelands in a productive state or to restore degraded rangelands (García-Palacios and others 2018, Guuroh et al 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Biotic and Abiotic Drivers of Topsoil Organic Carbon Concentration in Drylands Have Similar Effects at Regional and Global Scales

et al. 2019

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Drylands contain 25% of the world's soil organic carbon (SOC), which is controlled by many factors, both abiotic and biotic. Thus, understanding how these factors control SOC concentration can help to design more sustainable land-use practices in drylands aiming to foster and preserver SOC storage, something particularly important to fight ongoing global warming. We use two independent, large-scale databases with contrasting geographic coverage (236 sites in global drylands and 185 sites in Patagonia, Argentina) to evaluate the relative importance of abiotic (precipitation, temperature and soil texture) and biotic (primary productivity) factors as drivers of SOC concentration in drylands at global and regional scales. We found that biotic and abiotic factors had similar effects on SOC concentration across regional and global scales: maximum temperature and the sand content had negative effects, while precipitation and plant productivity exerted positive effects. Our findings provide empirical evidence that increases in temperature and reductions in rainfall, as forecasted by climatic models in many drylands worldwide, promote declines in SOC both directly and indirectly via the reduction of plant productivity. This has important implications for the conservation of drylands under climate change; land management should seek to enhance plant productivity as a tool to offset the negative impact of climate change on SOC storage and on associated ecosystem services.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biotic and Abiotic Drivers of Topsoil Organic Carbon Concentration in Drylands Have Similar Effects at Regional and Global Scales

et al. 2019

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“…This is in part a consequence of an insufficient framework to identify and interpret these complex challenges and effectively prioritize actions and investments to address them. A comprehensive accounting of ecosystem services may provide a framework to gauge the global benefits of rangelands and serve as a benchmark to assess appropriate stewardship goals and strategies (Guuroh et al, 2018; Kubiszewski et al, 2017). This framework will require interaction among national and multinational institutions given the global distribution of rangelands and the ecosystem services that they provision (Biermann et al, 2012; Walker et al, 2009).…”

Section: Future Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies for global rangeland stewardship: Assessment through the lens of the equilibrium–non‐equilibrium debate

Briske¹,

Coppock

Illius

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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This Review assesses the adequacy of current stewardship strategies to address the accelerating challenges confronting global rangeland systems. The assessment was conducted through the lens of the rangeland ecology debate that was initiated in the late 1980s to determine whether equilibrial or non‐equilibrial models more accurately represented the ecological dynamics of rangeland systems. The following lessons have emerged from this prolonged debate: (a) equilibrial and non‐equilibrial dynamics among plants and herbivores always coexist in individual systems; (b) herbivore persistence is strongly influenced by functional resource heterogeneity; (c) biotic feedbacks are highly dependent upon spatial and temporal scale; (d) multiple stable states separated by nonlinear trajectories may coexist on individual ecological sites and (e) management and policy decisions can have important consequences for rangeland systems despite high environmental stochasticity. These lessons demonstrate that scale and functional heterogeneity were critical ‘blind spots’ within the traditional rangeland profession. In contrast, pastoral strategies recognized these system variables as essential for exploitation of heterogeneous resource distribution, rather than assuming stable, uniform resource distribution. These divergent perceptions of scale and heterogeneity in grazed ecosystems largely explain the disparate interpretations of ecological carrying capacity that was central to the debate. Programmes supporting supplemental feeding and infrastructure development have created an anthropogenic category of non‐equilibrial dynamics by sustaining large numbers of livestock during droughts. These programmes decouple livestock and rangeland resources to create an additional stewardship dilemma regarding complex trade‐offs between livestock production and the capacity of systems to provision a broad array of global ecosystem services. Synthesis and applications. The fundamental challenge facing the global rangeland community may not be identification of a unified model of rangeland ecology—as assumed during the rangeland debate. Rather, the challenge may be how to best transform rangeland social–ecological systems to provide optimal combinations of ecosystem services to meet the needs of global citizens, while improving the well‐being of millions of rangeland residents who are highly dependent upon provisioning services. A comprehensive accounting of rangeland ecosystem services, supported by institutional governance and delivered as state–community partnerships, may provide the foundation for an alternative stewardship strategy to pursue this critical goal.

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“…soil multifunctionality, SVM) across the globe is of paramount importance to anticipate changes in ecosystem functioning under global change scenarios (Fraterrigo and Rusak 2008, IPCC 2013). Remarkably, a relatively large body of literature has explored the effects of SV locally or in regional comparisons (Linstädter et al 2014, Guuroh et al 2018), but no study has yet assessed the major environmental drivers of SVM in terrestrial ecosystems across the globe, which remains largely unexplored and poorly understood. This is particularly relevant for dryland ecosystems (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature and aridity regulate spatial variability of soil multifunctionality in drylands across the globe

Durán

Delgado‐Baquerizo

Dougill

et al. 2018

Ecology

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The relationship between the spatial variability of soil multifunctionality (i.e., the capacity of soils to conduct multiple functions; SVM) and major climatic drivers, such as temperature and aridity, has never been assessed globally in terrestrial ecosystems. We surveyed 236 dryland ecosystems from six continents to evaluate the relative importance of aridity and mean annual temperature, and of other abiotic (e.g., texture) and biotic (e.g., plant cover) variables as drivers of SVM, calculated as the averaged coefficient of variation for multiple soil variables linked to nutrient stocks and cycling. We found that increases in temperature and aridity were globally correlated to increases in SVM. Some of these climatic effects on SVM were direct, but others were indirectly driven through reductions in the number of vegetation patches and increases in soil sand content. The predictive capacity of our structural equation modelling was clearly higher for the spatial variability of N- than for C- and P-related soil variables. In the case of N cycling, the effects of temperature and aridity were both direct and indirect via changes in soil properties. For C and P, the effect of climate was mainly indirect via changes in plant attributes. These results suggest that future changes in climate may decouple the spatial availability of these elements for plants and microbes in dryland soils. Our findings significantly advance our understanding of the patterns and mechanisms driving SVM in drylands across the globe, which is critical for predicting changes in ecosystem functioning in response to climate change.

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Drivers of forage provision and erosion control in West African savannas—A macroecological perspective

Cited by 25 publications

References 89 publications

Biotic and Abiotic Drivers of Topsoil Organic Carbon Concentration in Drylands Have Similar Effects at Regional and Global Scales

Biotic and Abiotic Drivers of Topsoil Organic Carbon Concentration in Drylands Have Similar Effects at Regional and Global Scales

Strategies for global rangeland stewardship: Assessment through the lens of the equilibrium–non‐equilibrium debate

Temperature and aridity regulate spatial variability of soil multifunctionality in drylands across the globe

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