Trees, Shrubs, and Land-use Change: The Future of Carbon Storage in an African Savanna
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| Titles: | Main Title: Trees, Shrubs, and Land-use Change: The Future of Carbon Storage in an African Savanna Subtitle: Dissertation Liana Kindermann |
| Description: | Abstract: The global drylands cover nearly half of the terrestrial surface and are home to more than two billion people. In many drylands, ongoing land-use change transforms near-natural savanna vegetation to agricultural land to increase food production. In Southern Africa, these heterogenous savanna ecosystems are also recognized as habitats of many protected animal species, such as elephant, lion and large herds of diverse herbivores, which are of great value for the tourism industry. Here, subsistence farmers and livestock herder communities often live in close proximity to nature conservation areas. Although these land-use transformations are different regarding the future they aspire to, both processes, nature conservation with large herbivores and agricultural intensification, have in common, that they change the vegetation structure of savanna ecosystems, usually leading to destruction of trees, shrubs and the woody biomass they consist of. Such changes in woody vegetation cover and biomass are often regarded as forms of land degradation and forest loss. Global forest conservation approaches and international programs aim to stop degradation processes, also to conserve the carbon bound within wood from volatilization into earth’s atmosphere. In search for mitigation options against global climate change savannas are increasingly discussed as potential carbon sinks. Savannas, however, are not forests, in that they are naturally shaped by and adapted to disturbances, such as wildfires and herbivory. Unlike in forests, disturbances are necessary for stable, functioning savanna ecosystems and prevent these ecosystems from forming closed forest stands. Their consequently lower levels of carbon storage in woody vegetation have long been the reason for savannas to be overlooked as a potential carbon sink but recently the question was raised if carbon sequestration programs (such as REDD+) could also be applied to savanna ecosystems. However, heterogenous vegetation structure and chronic disturbances hamper the quantification of carbon stocks in savannas, and current procedures of carbon storage estimation entail high uncertainties due to methodological obstacles. It is therefore challenging to assess how future land-use changes such as agricultural intensification or increasing wildlife densities will impact the carbon storage balance of African drylands. In this thesis, I address the research gap of accurately quantifying carbon storage in vegetation and soils of disturbance-prone savanna ecosystems. I further analyse relevant drivers for both ecosystem compartments and their implications for future carbon storage under land-use change. Moreover, I show that in savannas different carbon storage pools vary in their persistence to disturbance, causing carbon bound in shrub vegetation to be most likely to experience severe losses under land-use change while soil organic carbon stored in subsoils is least likely to be impacted by land-use change in the future. I start with summarizing conventional approaches to carbon storage assessment and where and for which reasons they fail to accurately estimated savanna ecosystem carbon storage. Furthermore, I outline which future-making processes drive land-use change in Southern Africa along two pathways of land-use transformation and how these are likely to influence carbon storage. In the following chapters, I propose a new method of carbon storage estimation which is adapted to the specific conditions of disturbance-prone ecosystems and demonstrate the advantages of this approach in relation to existing forestry methods. Specifically, I highlight sources for previous over- and underestimation of savanna carbon stocks which the proposed methodology resolves. In the following chapters, I apply the new method to analyse impacts of land-use change on carbon storage in woody vegetation in conjunction with the soil compartment. With this interdisciplinary approach, I can demonstrate that indeed both, agricultural intensification and nature conservation with large herbivores, reduce woody carbon storage above- and belowground, but partly sequesters this carbon into the soil organic carbon stock. I then quantify whole-ecosystem carbon storage in different ecosystem compartments (above- and belowground woody carbon in shrubs and trees, respectively, as well as topsoil and subsoil organic carbon) of two savanna vegetation types (scrub savanna and savanna woodland). Moreover, in a space-for-time substitution I analyse how land-use changes impact carbon storage in each compartment and in the whole ecosystem. Carbon storage compartments are found to differ in their persistence to land-use change with carbon bound in shrub biomass being least persistent to future changes and subsoil organic carbon being most stable under changing land-use. I then explore which individual land-use change effects act as drivers of carbon storage through Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) and uncover non-linear effects, especially of elephant browsing, with implications for future carbon storage. In the last chapter, I discuss my findings in the larger context of this thesis and discuss relevant implications for land-use change and future-making decisions in rural Africa. |
| Identifiers: | https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-64894 (DOI) urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-648943 (URN) |
Responsible Party
| Creator: | Liana Kindermann (Author) |
| Publisher: | Publication Server of the University of Potsdam |
| Publication Year: | 2024 |
Topic
| TRR228 Topic: | Ecology |
| Related Subproject: | A1 |
| Subjects: | Keywords: Carbon, Carbon Sequestration, Carbon Storage Dynamics, Vegetation, Vegetation Structure, Ecology, Land Use Change, Conservation Areas, Agriculture, Rangeland Management |
| Geogr. Information Topic: | Biota |
File Details
| Filename: | kindermann_diss.pdf |
| Data Type: | Text - Dissertation / Doctoral Thesis |
| File Size: | 17.5 MB |
| Dates: | Available: 01.08.2024 Submitted: 15.05.2024 Accepted: 19.07.2024 |
| Mime Type: | application/pdf |
| Data Format: | PDF (final) |
| Language: | English |
| Status: | Completed |
Constraints
| Download Permission: | Free |
| General Access and Use Conditions: | According to the TRR228DB data policy agreement. |
| Access Limitations: | According to the TRR228DB data policy agreement. |
| Licence: | [Creative Commons] Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) |
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Specific Information - Publication
| Publication Status: | Published |
| Review Status: | Peer reviewed |
| Publication Type: | Book |
| City: | Potsdam |
| Number of Pages: | 198 |
Metadata Details
| Metadata Creator: | Liana Kindermann |
| Metadata Created: | 02.08.2024 |
| Metadata Last Updated: | 02.08.2024 |
| Subproject: | A1 |
| Funding Phase: | 2 |
| Metadata Language: | English |
| Metadata Version: | V50 |
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| Metadata Downloads: | 0 |
| Dataset Downloads: | 10 |
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