TY - JOUR
T1 - Long-term resilience, bush encroachment patterns and local knowledge in a Northeast African savanna
AU - Gil-Romera, Graciela
AU - Lamb, Henry F.
AU - Turton, David
AU - Sevilla-Callejo, Miguel
AU - Umer, Mohammed
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the AHRC (UK) under its ‘Landscape and Environment Programme’ (award no. A/H E510590/1) and carried out with the cooperation and support of the Institute of Ethiopan Studies and the Department of Geology, Addis Ababa University. We are indebted to the whole Mursi community for their hospitality, and for patiently answering our questions. We would particularly like to thank Mr. Olisarali Olibui for translation and fieldwork assistance. We also thank Dr. Melaku Wonderfrash (National Botanical Institute, Addis Ababa) for identifying specimens collected during the botanical surveys, Ms. Lorraine Morrison for processing the pollen samples and the Remote Sensing Cluster of Aberystwyth University for helping with the land cover classification. Finally, our thanks go to Dr. Brian Chase for his very useful suggestions on the sampling methods for the hyrax midden.
PY - 2010/10/1
Y1 - 2010/10/1
N2 - Bush encroachment is a significant phenomenon in savanna environments as it affects wildlife and local livelihoods by preventing new pasture generation. In this article we present a 2000-year record of vegetation change in the Dara range of the Mago National Park, southwestern Ethiopia, an area inhabited by Mursi agro-pastoralists. We use an interdisciplinary approach to understand whether bush encroachment in this area is a recent event or a transitional state of the savanna and describe the local understanding of encroachment as a species-specific process. The vegetation record was obtained from a fossil hyrax midden, a type of sediment already used in Southern Africa but never before in East Africa. Six encroaching phases, led by Capparaceae and Grewia, were found over the last two millennia. The system proved to be resilient, with alternating open and encroached phases, and showed a non-linear response to environmental change, thereby fitting the control theory hypothesis for hysteresis loops. Determining the thresholds conditioning the system's resilience could help to improve savanna management for both local people and National Park authorities.
AB - Bush encroachment is a significant phenomenon in savanna environments as it affects wildlife and local livelihoods by preventing new pasture generation. In this article we present a 2000-year record of vegetation change in the Dara range of the Mago National Park, southwestern Ethiopia, an area inhabited by Mursi agro-pastoralists. We use an interdisciplinary approach to understand whether bush encroachment in this area is a recent event or a transitional state of the savanna and describe the local understanding of encroachment as a species-specific process. The vegetation record was obtained from a fossil hyrax midden, a type of sediment already used in Southern Africa but never before in East Africa. Six encroaching phases, led by Capparaceae and Grewia, were found over the last two millennia. The system proved to be resilient, with alternating open and encroached phases, and showed a non-linear response to environmental change, thereby fitting the control theory hypothesis for hysteresis loops. Determining the thresholds conditioning the system's resilience could help to improve savanna management for both local people and National Park authorities.
KW - Africa
KW - Ethiopia
KW - Hyrax
KW - Indigenous knowledge
KW - Pollen
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=78650169393&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/2160/6767
U2 - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.04.008
DO - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.04.008
M3 - Article
SN - 1872-9495
VL - 20
SP - 612
EP - 626
JO - Global Environmental Change
JF - Global Environmental Change
IS - 4
ER -