Vegetation cover trends along the Botswana Kalahari transect

Ringrose, Susan; Matheson, Wilma; Wolski, Piotr; Huntsman-Mapila, P.

doi:10.1006/jare.2002.1092

Cited by 59 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The primary conversions in the area away from the river were from shrubland to woodland, and woodland to shrubland (woody conversions). The patterns found in this region match those patterns found across southern Africa where there has been an increase in woody vegetation (mostly shrubland) and a decrease in grassland [19,20,44]. Degradation of the herbaceous layer in this region began in the 1960s due to human land use, such as cattle, fire, logging, and agriculture [45].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

“…Specifically, this research is focused on the most heavily utilized portion of the park, from the Chobe Riverfront to the main road ( Figure 1). The main hypothesis is that the landscape has degraded over the study period, defined as bush encroachment or a conversion towards bare ground [20], due to an increasing number of elephants and tourists that utilize this riverfront. This research will therefore address the following three questions: (1) What is the dominant pattern of land-cover change, at a finer spatial scale, across the Chobe Riverfront from 1982 to 2011?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Utilizing Multiple Lines of Evidence to Determine Landscape Degradation within Protected Area Landscapes: A Case Study of Chobe National Park, Botswana from 1982 to 2011

2016

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Abstract:The savannas of Southern Africa are an important dryland ecosystem as they cover up to 54% of the landscape and support a rich variety of biodiversity. This paper evaluates landscape change in savanna vegetation along Chobe Riverfront within Chobe National Park Botswana, from 1982 to 2011 to understand what change may be occurring in land cover. Classifying land cover in savanna environments is challenging because the vegetation spectral signatures are similar across distinct vegetation covers. With vegetation species and even structural groups having similar signatures in multispectral imagery difficulties exist in making discrete classifications in such landscapes. To address this issue, a Random Forest classification algorithm was applied to predict land-cover classes. Additionally, time series vegetation indices were used to support the findings of the discrete land cover classification. Results indicate that a landscape level vegetation shift has occurred across the Chobe Riverfront, with results highlighting a shift in land cover towards more woody vegetation. This represents a degradation of vegetation cover within this savanna landscape environment, largely due to an increasing number of elephants and other herbivores utilizing the Riverfront. The forested area along roads at a further distance from the River has also had a loss of percent cover. The continuous analysis during 1982-2011, utilizing monthly AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) values, also verifies this change in amount of vegetation is a continuous and ongoing process in this region. This study provides land use planners and managers with a more reliable, efficient and relatively inexpensive tool for analyzing land-cover change across these highly sensitive regions, and highlights the usefulness of a Random Forest classification in conjunction with time series analysis for monitoring savanna landscapes.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Utilizing Multiple Lines of Evidence to Determine Landscape Degradation within Protected Area Landscapes: A Case Study of Chobe National Park, Botswana from 1982 to 2011

2016

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“…In addition to human-wildlife conflicts, habitat fragmentation due to fence construction has led to alterations of disturbance regimes, such as fire patterns and grazing pressure which in turn affects biogeochemical processes and the availability of habitat-related key structural resources (e.g., solitary nesting trees, foraging grounds, and migration corridors) [9][10][11]. Furthermore, climatic projections suggest that southern African savanna systems will experience an increased aridity due to higher mean temperatures and more highly variable mean annual precipitation [12,13], further adding uncertainty to the resource base and sustainability of these ecosystems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Vegetation Morphology Types in Southern Africa Savanna Using MODIS Time-Series Metrics: A Case Study of Central Kalahari, Botswana

Mishra

Crews

Miller

et al. 2015

Land

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Savanna ecosystems are geographically extensive and both ecologically and economically important; they therefore require monitoring over large spatial extents. There are, in particular, large areas within southern Africa savanna ecosystems that lack consistent geospatial data on vegetation morphological properties, which is a prerequisite for biodiversity conservation and sustainable management of ecological resources. Given the challenges involved in distinguishing and mapping savanna vegetation assemblages using remote sensing, the objective of this study was to develop a vegetation morphology map for the largest protected area in Africa, the central Kalahari. Six vegetation morphology classes were developed and sample training/validation pixels were selected for each class by analyzing extensive in situ data on vegetation structural and functional properties, in combination with existing ancillary data and coarse scale land cover products. The classification feature set consisted of annual and intra annual matrices derived from 14 years of satellite-derived vegetation indices images, and final classification was achieved using an ensemble tree based classifier. All vegetation morphology classes were mapped with high accuracy and the overall classification accuracy was 91.9%. Besides filling the geospatial data gap for the central Kalahari area, this vegetation morphology map is expected to serve as a critical input to ecological studies focusing on habitat use by wildlife and the efficacy of game fencing, as well as contributing to sustainable ecosystem management in the central Kalahari. OPEN ACCESSLand 2015, 4 198

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“…In landuse/landcover change studies, temporal data-whether in the form of from-to or paneled landscape change classes-can clarify causality in some cases or simplify the number of causal agents to consider in others [16,17]. In other academic realms, data on historical legacies and on consequences of spatial adjacency have been used to evaluate disease movement [18,19], species diversity [20][21][22], and woody encroachment [14,[23][24][25].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forefronting the Socio-Ecological in Savanna Landscapes through Their Spatial and Temporal Contingencies

Crews¹,

Young²

2013

Land

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Landscape changes and the processes driving them have been a critical component in both research and management efforts of savanna systems. These dynamics impact human populations, wildlife, carbon storage, and general spatio-temporal dynamism in response to both anthropomorphic and climatic shifts. Both biophysical and human agents of change can be identified by isolating their respective spatial, temporal, and organizational contingencies. However, we argue here that a significant portion of savanna research has either considered humans as exogenous (e.g., via enacting regional or broader policies) or somewhat spatio-temporally removed from the system (e.g., as in many protected areas with limited current human habitation). Examples from African savanna research and particularly those systems of southern Africa are thus reviewed and used to model a stylized or prototypical savanna system and contingencies. Such an approach allows for a richer socio-temporal integration of theories and data on past biophysical and human histories to facilitate an improved framework for understanding savanna systems and their complex contingencies as socio-ecological landscapes.

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Vegetation cover trends along the Botswana Kalahari transect

Cited by 59 publications

References 19 publications

Utilizing Multiple Lines of Evidence to Determine Landscape Degradation within Protected Area Landscapes: A Case Study of Chobe National Park, Botswana from 1982 to 2011

Utilizing Multiple Lines of Evidence to Determine Landscape Degradation within Protected Area Landscapes: A Case Study of Chobe National Park, Botswana from 1982 to 2011

Mapping Vegetation Morphology Types in Southern Africa Savanna Using MODIS Time-Series Metrics: A Case Study of Central Kalahari, Botswana

Forefronting the Socio-Ecological in Savanna Landscapes through Their Spatial and Temporal Contingencies

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