Increasing woody cover facilitates competitive exclusion of a savanna specialist

Estimating Woody Vegetation Cover in an African Savanna using remote sensing and Geostatistics

Long-term livestock exclusion facilitates native woody plant encroachment in a sandy semiarid rangeland

The role of livestock grazing in regulating woody cover and biomass in grass-dominant systems is well recognized. However, the way in which woody plant populations in respond when livestock are removed from grazing in the absence of other disturbances, such as fire, remains unclear.We conducted a 10-year, replicated fencing experiment in a sandy semiarid rangeland in northern China (which has a...

Rainfall, land use and woody vegetation cover change in semi-arid Australian savanna

1 The relative roles of climate and management for driving changes in woody cover in savannas over the past century are the subject of active debate. Perspectives arising from short-term, small-scale, local experiments are rarely tested over larger scales and longer time frames. 2 Regression analysis and aerial photography were used to assess the relative importance of land-use history (fire an...

Biogeochemical Changes Accompanying Woody Plant Encroachment in a Subtropical Savanna

Ecosystem properties of surficial (0–10 cm) soils in remnant herbaceous patches were compared to those of contrasting woody plant patch types (upland discrete cluster, upland grove, and lowland woodland) where shifting land cover is known to have occurred over the past 50–77 yr. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and quantify the biogeochemical consequences and subsequent developmental r...

Bimodality of woody cover and biomass

Discussions This discussion paper is/has been under review for the journal Earth System Dynamics (ESD). Please refer to the corresponding final paper in ESD if available. Abstract Multiple states of woody cover under similar climate conditions are found in both conceptual models and observations. Due to the limitation of the observed woody cover data set, it is unclear whether the observed bimo...