Impact of communal land use and conservation on woody vegetation structure in the Lowveld savannas of South Africa – Lidar results

People in the rural, communal areas of South Africa rely on live fuel wood for more than 90% of their energy requirements. Using airborne lidar from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) we compared tree canopy cover and height distributions between communal landscapes with heavy utilization to fully protected public and private reserves in the Lowveld of South Africa. Rangelands and fields in most of the communal sites had more vegetation cover in the 5-7m and >7m classes than most of the conservation sites, presumably due to the absence of elephants in communal rangelands. On granite substrates there was a 50% reduction in woody cover below 5m in communal rangelands. These results in conjunction with related studies, suggest that communal land use have a higher impact on the woody cover below 5m than both elephants and fire.