Rangeland Ecology & Management
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- Library Collection Record
1 Savanna
Savannas are characterized by the coexistence of trees and grasses and occur largely in the seasonal tropics between the equatorial rainforests and mid-latitude desert ecosystems. This article…Publication Date 2008- climate change
- Deciduous
- Evergreen
- fire
- grazing
- herbivory
- phenology
- Seasonal tropics
- soils
- Tree and grass competition
- savanna
- ecology
- animal impact
- grasslands
- rainfall
- southern Africa
- Library Collection RecordAn overview of ecological models of grasslands and their research questions is presented. For the purpose of this article, models are regarded as a simplified and formalized representation of…Publication Date 2008
- competition
- disturbance
- Ecosystem modeling
- Grassland dynamics
- grazing
- Optimal life-history strategies
- primary production
- Remote sensing data
- Spatially explicit models
- succession
- modelling
- ecosystem ecology
- community
- vegetation dynamics
- plant production
- southern Africa
- Library Collection RecordSummary Grasslands are located in areas with precipitation ranging between 150 and 1200 mm yr-1 and temperature between 0 and 25 C (Lieth and Whittaker, 1975). Along a precipitation gradient, in…Publication Date 2001
- grasslands
- rainfall
- ecosystem ecology
- southern Africa
- Library Collection RecordAbstract Livestock grazing is often viewed as having detrimental effects on plants and plant communities. Livestock grazing can, however, be managed to be an effective tool for vegetation management…Publication Date 2010
- livestock
- grazing
- nutrition
- ecology
- management
- vegetation dynamics
- ecosystem ecology
- fire ecology
- southern Africa
- Library Collection RecordIn the Sahel and the Kalahari, the growth in groundwater extraction via simple wells and boreholes is contributing to an increased use of dryland natural resources, to competition for resources, and…Publication Date 2003
- rangeland condition
- rainfall
- groundwater
- animal production
- vegetation dynamics
- biodiversity
- bush thickening
- indigenous encroaching species
- southern Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe chapter describes different patches that are included in a single landscape unit. Patches differ in size, species composition, and the way they function in a landscape. Patches may be composed of…Publication Date 2002
- vegetation dynamics
- ecology
- southern Africa
- Library Collection RecordAbstract Question: Do anthropogenic activities facilitate the distribution of exotic plants along steep altitudinal gradients? Location: Sani Pass road, Grassland biome, South Africa. Methods: On…Publication Date 2008
- Alien
- dispersal
- disturbance
- Gradient analysis
- grasslands
- Multivariate
- spatial analysis
- transect
- Germishuizen & Meyer (2003)
- Alien invasive species
- rehabilitation
- restoration ecology
- management
- biodiversity
- seed banks
- vegetation dynamics
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordNo abstract availablePublication Date 2007
- seed banks
- savanna
- vegetation dynamics
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordSummary * 1Grasses using the C4 photosynthetic pathway dominate today's savanna ecosystems and account for ~20% of terrestrial carbon fixation. However, this dominant status was reached only…Publication Date 2008
- atmospheric CO2
- C4 plants
- climate change
- fire
- grasslands
- grazing
- Poaceae
- rainfall
- savanna
- seasonality
- carbon dioxide
- palaeoclimate
- palaeobotany
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordAbstract Anthropogenic perturbations have profoundly modified the Earth's biogeochemical cycles, the most prominent of these changes being manifested by global carbon (C) cycling. We…Publication Date 2007
- carbon sequestration
- 13C NMR
- deforestation
- land-use change
- NEXAFS
- organic matter composition
- Sr-FTIR-ATR
- synchrotron radiation
- land use
- grasslands
- vegetation dynamics
- carbon dynamics
- soil organic carbon
- agriculture
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordSummary * 1Demographic processes, particularly the recruitment of seedlings, are critical to the long-term survival and re-establishment of plant populations. In many perennial grasslands successful…Publication Date 2008
- demography
- emergence
- full factorial experiment
- intraspecific competition
- irrigation
- recruitment limitation
- seed addition
- seedling survival
- semi-arid savanna
- Stipagrostis uniplumis
- grasslands
- fire ecology
- seeds
- ecosystem ecology
- vegetation dynamics
- germination
- Africa
- Library Collection Record[1] Land use/cover change has been recognized as a key component in global change. Various land cover data sets, including historically reconstructed, recently observed, and future projected, have…Publication Date 2007
- land use
- climate change
- management
- classification
- data analysis
- remote sensing
- modelling
- rainfall
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordIt has been well established that drought frequently emerges in several tropical regions following the onset of El Niño. An important characteristic of such droughts is their spatial extent, which…Publication Date 2006
- drought
- climate change
- El Nino
- rainfall
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordIn Kenya, lands surrounding wildlife protected areas (PAs), referred to as dispersal areas, have undergone widespread land use changes, but these have been little studied. This study investigated…Publication Date 2008
- conservation
- agriculture
- national parks
- land use
- grazing
- biodiversity
- disturbance
- rainfall
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordDegradation in arid and semi-arid regions can be ascribed primarily to environmental conditions such as extreme changes in temperature and erratic rainfall patterns. Seed germination and seedling…Publication Date 2006
- Drought Stress
- polyethylene glycol (PEG)
- restoration
- rangelands
- seeds
- germination
- grasslands
- rainfall
- climate
- drought
- plant autecology
- restoration ecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe aim of the study was to identify and classify the woodlands, bushland and grasslands of the Umkhanyakude Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Node (also known as Maputaland) into homogenous…Publication Date 2006
- plant ecology
- Maputaland
- multivariate analysis
- Phytosociology
- grasslands
- monitoring
- data analysis
- landscape ecology
- vegetation dynamics
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe response of photosynthetic activity to interannual rainfall variations in Africa South of the Sahara is examined using 20 years (1981-2000) of Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) AVHRR…Publication Date 2007
- NDVI
- vegetation
- rainfall
- Land cover
- soil properties
- Interannual variability
- Africa
- remote sensing
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThis paper evaluated the capacity of SPOT VEGETATION time-series to monitor the vegetation biomass and water content in order to improve fire risk assessment in the savanna ecosystem of Kruger…Publication Date 2006
- biomass
- Fire risk assessment
- SPOT VEGETATION
- time-series
- Vegetation water content
- fire ecology
- savanna
- vegetation dynamics
- monitoring
- plant production
- national parks
- remote sensing
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordEarly warning systems (EWS) tend to focus on the identification of slow onset disasters such famine and epidemic disease. Since hazardous environmental conditions often precede disastrous outcomes by…Publication Date 2006
- Early warning
- Africa
- food security
- NDVI
- precipitation
- rainfall
- Malaria
- Rift valley fever
- Pastoral livelihoods
- modelling
- drought
- management
- system ecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordSavanna ecosystems of southern Africa are strongly influenced by water availability and fire intensity, and this study aimed to show whether these two specific environmental variables are reflected…Publication Date 2008
- calibration
- Kruger National Park
- fire history
- quantitative analysis
- Relevant Source Area of Charcoal
- fire ecology
- palaeobotany
- rainfall
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordCoexistence of trees and grasses in savannas should be possible if competition between the woody and the grassy components is less intense than the competition within each component. Although several…Publication Date 2008
- Acacia mellifera
- Competitor removal experiment
- Nearest-neighbour distance
- quantile regression
- spatial autocorrelation
- Spatial point pattern analysis
- savanna
- ecosystem ecology
- vegetation dynamics
- ecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe tree-grass interactions of African savannas are mainly determined by varying rainfall patterns and soil fertility. Large savanna trees are known to modify soil nutrient conditions, but whether…Publication Date 2007
- canopy
- Fibre content
- Grass structure
- grazing
- nitrogen
- phosphorus
- savanna
- rainfall
- soil fertility
- plant production
- nutrition
- soil organic carbon
- biomass
- forage quality
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe coexistence of woody and grassy plants in savannas has often been attributed to a rooting-niche separation (two-layer hypothesis). Water was assumed to be the limiting resource for both growth…Publication Date 2006
- fire
- grazing
- Honeycomb rippling model
- Inter-tree competition
- Spatio-temporal rainfall variation
- Tree-grass coexistence
- savanna
- indigenous encroaching species
- grasslands
- soil moisture
- rainfall
- vegetation dynamics
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordSummary In this paper, we present a method to estimate the additional costs made by nature reserve managers to mitigate the effects of atmospheric deposition. Theoretically, these extra costs may be…Publication Date 2007
- Nature target types
- Management costs
- Deposition scenarios
- grasslands
- Reed and rough land
- Heathland
- forests
- Moorland pools
- conservation
- vegetation dynamics
- Economic Aspects
- greenhouse gases
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordSummary Robust calibration of hydrological models, driven by gridded precipitation data derived from either Regional Climate Models or statistical downscaling of General Circulation Models, is…Publication Date 2008
- groundwater
- recharge
- precipitation
- distribution
- Africa
- rainfall
- hydrology
- climate change
- soil moisture
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordWe are attempting to set up a new protocol for palaeoecological reconstruction in relation to the fossil hominin site Laetoli, Tanzania. This is based on the premise that habitat variability in the…Publication Date 2008
- Habitat variability
- rainfall
- climate
- topography
- soil
- Hominins
- ecology
- paleoecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordNamibian rangelands are encroached with Acacia mellifera, partially resulting from a poor understanding of vegetation dynamics. A conceptual state-and-transition model of vegetation dynamics in the…Publication Date 2008
- fire
- hazards
- management
- opportunities
- state-and-transition
- savanna
- indigenous encroaching species
- bush thickening
- rainfall
- seed banks
- vegetation dynamics
- plant autecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThis paper provides a reappraisal of contemporary perspectives on climate change in southern Africa's Okavango Delta sub-region by drawing on time-line evidence from historical/archival records…Publication Date 2008
- Bush-encroachment
- desiccation
- deterioration
- Human interventions
- wetland
- climate change
- remote sensing
- hydrology
- rainfall
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordDespite the ubiquity of sub-tropical savannas throughout the earth, limitations of savanna productivity are understudied relative to other terrestrial systems. The limitations of savanna productivity…Publication Date 2008
- grass
- nitrogen
- phosphorus
- savanna
- rainfall
- soil nutrients
- plant production
- plant autecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordA number of studies have begun to show the large impact that pastoralism has on African savanna ecosystems. Here we look at the impact of abandoned settlements on the distribution of the large…Publication Date 2008
- pastoralism
- Sedentarization
- primary succession
- Nutrient hotspots
- community
- land use
- Abandoned lands
- vegetation dynamics
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordChanges in species richness and vegetation composition in the diverse semi-arid Succulent Karoo vegetation of South Africa were investigated after 67 (1937-2004) years of rest from livestock grazing…Publication Date 2008
- diversity
- Growth Form
- ordination
- species richness
- succession
- Termitaria
- grazing
- vegetation dynamics
- ecology
- insects
- degradation
- restoration ecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe Kalahari sand sheet, with a 2.5-million ha area, is probably the largest continuous surface of sand in the world. The Kalahari Transect (KT) is one of a set of IGBP 'megatransects '…Publication Date 2007
- biogeochemistry
- Hydraulic properties
- Kalahari transect
- Sand deposits
- stable isotopes
- ecosystem dynamics
- vegetation dynamics
- soil organic carbon
- Soil Condition
- soil nutrients
- rainfall
- grasslands
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe phenology of three dominant and economically important tree species; Acacia erioloba, Acacia luederitzii and Acacia mellifera, all widespread in the Kalahari in Botswana, was studied at Tsabong (…Publication Date 2007
- Kalahari
- phenology
- Acacia luederitzii
- Acacia erioloba
- Acacia mellifera
- litter
- plant autecology
- climate change
- rainfall
- fodder production
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordIn Namaqualand, heavy grazing of low-lying areas has resulted in the reduction of palatable perennial shrubs and the dominance of the unpalatable shrub, Galenia africana. This study investigates the…Publication Date 2007
- Succulent karoo
- Namaqualand
- Vegetation Change
- rehabilitation
- microhabitats
- grazing
- seeds
- restoration ecology
- vegetation dynamics
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordA national-level land degradation risk monitoring system identified an important grazing area in central northern Namibia as an area at risk of environmental change. A time series analysis of primary…Publication Date 2007
- semi-arid
- local knowledge
- rainfall variability
- water supply
- grazing
- land management
- degradation
- data analysis
- grasslands
- livestock
- rainfall
- participatory rural appraisal
- decision support systems
- management
- traditional knowledge
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordWe investigated the effects of rainfall and the number of animals on changes in vegetation and on the output of milk and meat from the communal areas of Namaqualand. Previously published short- and…Publication Date 2007
- climate change
- degradation
- desert
- Karoo
- livestock production
- Disequilibrium
- sustainability
- animal nutrition
- rainfall
- pastoralism
- subsistence agriculture
- animal production
- management
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordAdvanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data (NDVI, 1 km2, 1985-2003) and modeled net primary production (NPP, 8 km2, 1981-2000) data were used to…Publication Date 2007
- monitoring
- AVHRR
- NDVI
- rain-use efficiency
- NPP
- Communal lands
- South Africa
- degradation
- land use
- remote sensing
- NDVI values
- mapping
- rainfall
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe objective of this paper is to examine the spatial variability of islands of enhanced hydrologic activity and its application to remediation of degraded arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Factors…Publication Date 2006
- Biotic productivity
- heterogeneity
- rangeland
- remediation
- runoff
- Water ponding dikes
- restoration ecology
- degradation
- vegetation dynamics
- ecosystem ecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordDegradation in semi-arid Karoo rangelands has been ascribed to over-utilization by livestock and variations in rainfall regime. The understanding of vegetation dynamics in confined plant-herbivore…Publication Date 2006
- African wild herbivore
- Herbivore exclosure
- plant functional type
- Protected area
- vegetation monitoring
- rangelands
- rangeland condition
- vegetation dynamics
- livestock
- grazing
- land use
- national parks
- rainfall
- monitoring
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordIn the Miombo Woodlands Region of south-central Africa, the interaction between fires and elephants is one of the main drivers of vegetation, along with climate, soils and topography. Fire-elephant…Publication Date 2008
- fire
- Elephants
- multivariate statistics
- Miombo woodlands
- conservation
- savanna
- mammals
- Nature reserves
- vegetation dynamics
- ecology
- ecosystem ecology
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe self-thinning line is a very robust pattern, which can be obtained in modeling studies by a variety of different mechanistic assumptions. Our opinion is that we can only advance in our…Publication Date 2008
- Size inequality
- Competitive asymmetry
- Zone of influence model
- Arid savanna
- Acacia reficiens
- Namibia
- Parsimony
- Pattern-oriented modeling
- savanna
- vegetation dynamics
- modelling
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordMany mechanisms have been suggested to explain the coexistence of woody species and grasses in savannas, yet, evidence from field studies and simulation models has been mixed. Shrub encroachment is…Publication Date 2007
- Patch-dynamics
- Cyclical succession
- shrub encroachment
- Spatially explicit root growth
- Computer simulation model
- Validation
- Latin Hypercube sensitivity analysis
- Acacia mellifera
- savanna
- indigenous encroaching species
- vegetation dynamics
- ecosystem ecology
- modelling
- rainfall
- fire
- soil moisture
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordIn semiarid savannas of Southern Africa current land use practices and climate change may lead to substantial changes of vegetation structure in the near future, however uncertainty remains about the…Publication Date 2006
- Acacia erioloba
- Bush encroachment
- global change
- Grewia flava
- overgrazing
- seed dispersal
- shrub encroachment
- Southern Kalahari
- Spatial-explicit simulation model
- savanna
- land use
- grazing
- climate change
- vegetation dynamics
- cattle
- ecosystem ecology
- ecosystem dynamics
- rainfall
- fire ecology
- modelling
- conservation
- management
- carrying capacity
- biodiversity
- indigenous encroaching species
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordUnlike any other biome, savannas consist of both trees and grasses in a persistent and equitable manner. This unique mixture of two different life forms attracted scientific scrutiny for decades.…Publication Date 2006
- Terminalia sericea
- Shallow root system
- savannas
- rainfall
- Etosha National Park
- grazing
- indigenous encroaching species
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordA payments for ecosystem services (PES) system came about in South Africa with the establishment of the government-funded Working for Water (WfW) programme that clears mountain catchments and…Publication Date 2008
- Working for Water
- Payment mechanisms
- ecosystem services
- water supply
- Poverty relief
- Poverty
- Alien invasive species
- fire
- plant production
- biodiversity
- hydrology
- vegetation dynamics
- Economic Aspects
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThis paper forms part of a long-term study of land degradation in the Klein Seekoei valley in the Sneeuberg uplands about 30 km southwest of the town of Middelburg, South Africa (Fig. 1). Landscape…Publication Date 2006
- erosion
- Karoo
- rainfall intensity
- Stock numbers
- land degradation
- Gullies
- rainfall
- degradation
- rangeland condition
- rangelands
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordConserving African wildlife in human-occupied landscapes requires management intervention that is guided by a mechanistic understanding of how anthropogenic factors influence large-scale ecological…Publication Date 2007
- wildlife
- rainfall
- predation
- competition
- apparent competition
- Non-protected area
- management
- conservation
- grasslands
- eco - tourism
- cattle
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThis series of two papers describes a mechanistic model that simulates within years the productivity of vegetation and livestock on the communal semi-arid rangeland of the Succulent Karoo of South…Publication Date 2007
- semi-arid rangelands
- Mechanistic model
- plant growth
- diet selection
- food intake
- animal productivity
- rangeland condition
- rangelands
- plant production
- animal production
- communal farming
- livestock
- management
- soil moisture
- rainfall
- runoff
- modelling
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordThe worldwide loss of utilisable rangeland in (semi-) arid areas results in huge economic and social costs. Only adaptive management strategies are able to cope with these systems, which are mainly…Publication Date 2007
- Non-equilibrium system
- grazing
- Opportunistic management
- Resting
- semi-arid
- simulation model
- rangeland condition
- rangelands
- modelling
- Economic Aspects
- management
- rainfall
- Africa
- Library Collection RecordLarge herbivores can both positively and negatively affect primary productivity and rates of nutrient cycling in different ecosystems. Positive effects of grazers in grasslands have been attributed…Publication Date 2006
- livestock
- soil fertility
- rainfall
- ecosystem processes
- savanna
- productivity
- soil fertility
- cattle
- migration
- Africa