Utilization of the SAVANNA model to analyze future patterns of vegetation cover in Kruger National Park under changing climate

Bunting, Erin; Fullman, Timothy J.; Kiker, Gregory A.; Southworth, Jane

doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2016.09.012

Cited by 21 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Degradation can include several phenomena, including a decrease in biomass of vegetation (seen in this study in and around GNP) and bush encroachment. Bush encroachment is a type of degradation that results in an increase in lower quality short woody plants [12,44,45]. Important drivers of savanna vegetation and therefore potential degradation include, decline in precipitation (already seen here), changes in herbivory (increases to a certain population level may mitigate degradation, but beyond that level, may actually exacerbate it), decreased fire frequency, and humans [4][5][6][7][42][43][44][45][46][47].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Precipitation values were also graphed as a time series, normalized for seasonality, anomalies were determined, and linear trends were added. Precipitation is also quantitatively compared to mean NDVI, as savanna vegetation-precipitation association is well established [5,[7][8][9]12,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26]].…”

Section: Seasonal Precipitation Totalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Up to a precipitation threshold of 750 mm/year, grasses dominate, between 750-950 mm/year, more mixed systems occur, and above 950 mm/year, woodlands dominate [5,[7][8][9]. Decreases in precipitation alone can lead to declines in vegetation, and when coupled with rising temperatures the resulting lower availability of soil moisture causes even further declines in vegetation [10][11][12]. Savannas are an important conservation landscape in southern Africa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Healthy Park Needs Healthy Vegetation: The Story of Gorongosa National Park in the 21st Century

et al. 2020

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Understanding trends or changes in biomass and biodiversity around conservation areas in Africa is important and has economic and societal impacts on the surrounding communities. Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique was established under unique conditions due to its complex history. In this study, we used a time-series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to explore seasonal trends in biomass between 2000 and 2016. In addition, vegetation directional persistence was created. This product is derived from the seasonal NDVI time series-based analysis and represents the accumulation of directional change in NDVI relative to a fixed benchmark (2000–2004). Trends in precipitation from Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) was explored from 2000–2016. Different vegetation covers are also considered across various landscapes, including a comparison between the Lower Gorongosa (savanna), Mount Gorongosa (rainforest), and surrounding buffer zones. Important findings include a decline in precipitation over the time of study, which most likely drives the observed decrease in NDVI. In terms of vegetation persistence, Lower Gorongosa had stronger positive trends than the buffer zone, and Mount Gorongosa had higher negative persistence overall. Directional persistence also varied by vegetation type. These are valuable findings for park managers and conservationists across the world.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Seasonal Precipitation Totalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Healthy Park Needs Healthy Vegetation: The Story of Gorongosa National Park in the 21st Century

et al. 2020

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“…Similarly, increasing temperatures may influence vegetation‐mediated feedbacks on climate change estimates in prerain green‐up plants. Studies have suggested that temperature increases might have caused increased productivity and growth in some southern African woodlands (Bunting, Fullman, Kiker, & Southworth, ; Davis, Hoffman, & Roberts, ), therefore, potentially leading to greater CO 2 uptake.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies have suggested that temperature increases might have caused increased productivity and growth in some southern African woodlands (Bunting, Fullman, Kiker, & Southworth, 2016;Davis, Hoffman, & Roberts, 2017), therefore, potentially leading to greater CO 2 uptake.…”

Section: Relationships Between Lsp and Rainfall Parametersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large‐scale prerain vegetation green‐up across Africa

Adole

Dash

Atkinson

2018

Global Change Biology

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Information on the response of vegetation to different environmental drivers, including rainfall, forms a critical input to ecosystem models. Currently, such models are run based on parameters that, in some cases, are either assumed or lack supporting evidence (e.g., that vegetation growth across Africa is rainfall-driven). A limited number of studies have reported that the onset of rain across Africa does not fully explain the onset of vegetation growth, for example, drawing on the observation of prerain flush effects in some parts of Africa. The spatial extent of this prerain green-up effect, however, remains unknown, leaving a large gap in our understanding that may bias ecosystem modelling. This paper provides the most comprehensive spatial assessment to-date of the magnitude and frequency of the different patterns of phenology response to rainfall across Africa and for different vegetation types. To define the relations between phenology and rainfall, we investigated the spatial variation in the difference, in number of days, between the start of rainy season (SRS) and start of vegetation growing season (SOS); and between the end of rainy season (ERS) and end of vegetation growing season (EOS). We reveal a much more extensive spread of prerain green-up over Africa than previously reported, with prerain green-up being the norm rather than the exception. We also show the relative sparsity of postrain green-up, confined largely to the Sudano-Sahel region. While the prerain green-up phenomenon is well documented, its large spatial extent was not anticipated. Our results, thus, contrast with the widely held view that rainfall drives the onset and end of the vegetation growing season across Africa. Our findings point to a much more nuanced role of rainfall in Africa's vegetation growth cycle than previously thought, specifically as one of a set of several drivers, with important implications for ecosystem modelling.

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Savanna Ecosystem Models

Kiker

Scogings

2019

Savanna Woody Plants and Large Herbivores

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Utilization of the SAVANNA model to analyze future patterns of vegetation cover in Kruger National Park under changing climate

Cited by 21 publications

References 46 publications

A Healthy Park Needs Healthy Vegetation: The Story of Gorongosa National Park in the 21st Century

A Healthy Park Needs Healthy Vegetation: The Story of Gorongosa National Park in the 21st Century

Large‐scale prerain vegetation green‐up across Africa

Savanna Ecosystem Models

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