IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/envman/v56y2015i1d10.1007_s00267-015-0491-3.html

Assessing the Effects of Woody Plant Traits on Understory Herbaceous Cover in a Semiarid Rangeland

Author

Listed:
  • Tamrat A. Belay

    (Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management
    Hawassa University)

  • Stein R. Moe

    (Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management)

Abstract

The ecological impact of woody plant encroachment in rangeland ecosystems has traditionally been evaluated based on correlation studies between densities of dissimilar woody plants and various ecosystem properties. However, ecosystem properties respond differently to woody plant encroachment because of variations in adaptation of co-occurring woody plants. The objective of this study is to predict the impact of woody plant encroachment on understory herbaceous cover based on analysis of key traits of woody plants. We conducted a vegetation survey in 4 savanna sites in southwestern Ethiopia and compared 9 different key traits of 19 co-occurring woody plants with understory herbaceous cover. Our results show that low understory herbaceous cover is associated with evergreen leaf phenology, shrubby growth form, smaller relative crown-base height and larger relative crown diameter. However, the N2-fixing ability and density of woody plants did not influence the understory herbaceous cover. This shows that traits of individual woody plants can predict the impact of woody plant encroachment on understory herbaceous cover better than density does. The finding improves our ability to accurately predict the impact of woody plant encroachment on various ecosystem properties in highly diverse savanna systems. This plant trait-based approach could be also used as an important management exercise to assess and predict the impact of encroaching woody species in several rangeland ecosystems.

Suggested Citation

  • Tamrat A. Belay & Stein R. Moe, 2015. "Assessing the Effects of Woody Plant Traits on Understory Herbaceous Cover in a Semiarid Rangeland," Environmental Management, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 165-175, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:envman:v:56:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1007_s00267-015-0491-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s00267-015-0491-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00267-015-0491-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00267-015-0491-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:envman:v:56:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1007_s00267-015-0491-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.