The principal aim of this study was to establish biogeographical patterns in the legume flora of southern Africa so as to facilitate the selection of species with agricultural potential. Plant collection data from the National Herbarium, South Africa, were analysed to establish the diversity and areas covered by legumes (Leguminosae/Fabaceae) indigenous to South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. A...

The ongoing changes in vegetation spring phenology in temperate/cold regions are widely attributed to temperature. However, in arid/semiarid ecosystems, the correlation between spring temperature and phenology is much less clear. We test the hypothesis that precipitation plays an important role in the temperature dependency of phenology in arid/semiarid regions. We therefore investigated the in...

*Correspondence: H. Peter Linder, Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Zollikerstrasse 107, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] Sub-Saharan Africa includes some 45,000 plant species. The spatial patterns of this diversity have been well explored. We can group the species into a set of biogeographical regions (largely co-incident with regions defined ...

(Rock outcrop habitats in the Venezuelan Guayana lowlands: their main vegetation types and floristic components). The Guayana Shield, located in north-eastern South America, consists of a highly complex and composite mosaic of landscape elements. Amongst these, inselbergs are very conspicuous, because of their peculiar shape and their unusual associated vegetation. Geologically, these rock outc...

Global warming has greatly stimulated vegetation growth through both extending the growing season and promoting photosynthesis in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Analyzing the combined dynamics of such trends can potentially improve our current understanding on changes in vegetation functioning and the complex relationship between anthropogenic and climatic drivers. This study aims to analyze the...

In arid and semi-arid environments, the characterization of the inter-annual variations of the light use efficiency ε due to water stress still relies mostly on meteorological data. Thus the GPP estimation based on procedures exclusively driven by remote sensing data has not found yet a widespread use. In this work, the potential to characterize the water stress in semi-natural vegetation of th...

Contents 1. Introduction 1.1. Arid Ecosystems 1.2. Desertification 2. Degradation of natural resources 3. Frame conditions: The importance of scale 4. Defining compartments for feasible approaches 5. Assessment and monitoring of the problem 6. Approaches to combating degradation in arid systems 6.1. Practical steps within the biophysical system 6.1.1 Water resources 6.1.2. Conservation of soils...

Vegetation patterns and spatial organization are influenced by the changing environmental conditions and human activities. However, the effect of environment on vegetation at different vegetation classification levels has been unclear. We conducted an analysis to explore the relationship between environment and vegetation in the land use/land cover (LULC), vegetation group, vegetation type, and...

................................................................................................................................................... ii Preface...................................................................................................................................................... 1 Background ..............................................................................