Topo-edaphic environment and forestry plantation disturbance affect the distribution of grassland forage and non-forage resources, Maputaland, South Africa

A comprehensive review of the production, adoption and sustained use of biomass pellets in Ghana

“…This situation has resulted in a disagreement between scale-up and finding the required capital to create a pellet supply chain [ 208 ]. Though rich in forest materials and labor, all four pellet factories in South Africa were closed after a few years of operation due to the unavailability of raw materials, costly logistics, lack of skilled personnel to run factories and the increase in the cost of feedstock treatment due to contamination [ 16 , 209 ]. Other African countries such as Malawi [ 210 ] and Uganda [ 211 ] have conducted feasibility studies on how to increase the share of biomass pellets in their energy mix.…”

Topo-edaphic environment and forest plantation disturbance explain patterns of grassland species richness, composition and structure in an agro-ecological landscape, Maputaland, South Africa

“…The template of grassland classification used this study has served well in terms of considering the provision of grassland ecosystems services, which is fully developed in Starke et al (2020).…”

“…The most fitting ecological land use for wetlanddepression and hygrophilous grassland would be for livestock production through the supply of quality forage resources; supplementary forage and medical resources could be supplied by elevated grasslands. Intact suffrutex grasslands should be preserved at all cost because as they are a regionally endemic grassland type (Mucina et al 2006;Maurin et al 2014) that contain a diversity of medicinal and spiritual plant species (Starke et al 2020).…”

“…The cost of transforming grasslands to forestry plantations incurs a loss of grassland ecosystem services that may affect communities who rely on the environment for their livelihoods, and also urban populations who utilise native plants that are sourced from rural areas. In a companion study (Starke et al 2020), we quantified the forage and non-forage resources supplied by these five grassland types, finding 180 individual plant uses. Low-lying grasslands had the best quality of forage, while elevated grasslands contained about 50 medicinal plant species and a majority of the commercially prospective woody species (e.g.…”

“…It was further expected that previously afforested, regenerated grassland would be floristically less diverse than communal elevated or low-lying grasslands. An analysis of the forage and non-forage ecosystem services provided by the grassland types identified in this study are reported in a companion paper (Starke et al 2020).…”