Publications related to Savanna

Regional uniqueness of tree species composition and response to forest loss and climate change

Devis Tuia, Nina Marion Aurélia Van Tiel, Loïc Pellissier

The conservation and restoration of forest ecosystems require detailed knowledge of the native plant compositions. Here, we map global forest tree composition and assess the impacts of historical forest cover loss and climate change on trees. The global oc ...

Nature Portfolio2024

On the fractal structure of soil moisture fields

Andrea Rinaldo

We study the spatial structure of soil moisture fields within savanna ecosystems, whose persistence is vital because it is the driver of the entire ecological structure and function. These include changes in the physical and biogeochemical conditions of th ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2021

Alternative Scenarios for the Development of Oil Palm in the Tropics: Carbon and Nutrients Dynamics

Juan Carlos Quezada Rivera

Expansion of agriculture in forested areas poses significant threats and pressure to ecosystems and potentially the global climate. More specifically, expansion of oil palm (OP) plantations has been found to exert great impact on key ecosystem functions li ...

EPFL2020

Contrasting Leaf Trait Responses of Conifer and Broadleaved Seedlings to Altered Resource Availability Are Linked to Resource Strategies

Christoph Bachofen, Yan Li Zhang

(1) Understanding tree seedling responses to water, nutrient, and light availability is crucial to precisely predict potential shifts in composition and structure of forest communities under future climatic conditions. (2) We exposed seedlings of widesprea ...

2020

Carbon neutral expansion of oil palm plantations in the Neotropics

Alexandre Buttler, Thomas Guillaume, Juan Carlos Quezada Rivera

Alternatives to ecologically devastating deforestation land use change trajectories are needed to reduce the carbon footprint of oil palm (OP) plantations in the tropics. Although various land use change options have been proposed, so far, there are no emp ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)2019

Evaporation from cultivated and semi-wild Sudanian Savanna in west Africa

Marc Parlange, Natalie Claire Ceperley, Theophile Mande, Nicolaas Cornelis van de Giesen

Rain-fed farming is the primary livelihood of semi-arid west Africa. Changes in land cover have the potential to affect precipitation, the critical resource for production. Turbulent flux measurements from two eddy-covariance towers and additional observat ...

European Geosciences Union2017

Disturbance-grazer-vegetation interactions maintain habitat diversity in mountain pasture-woodlands

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

Low-intensity livestock grazing is a widespread management tool in order to maintain habitat diversity in mountain pasture-woodlands for nature conservation purposes. Historical photographs indicate that forest disturbance significantly contributed to fore ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Integrating models across temporal and spatial scales to simulate landscape patterns and dynamics in mountain pasture-woodlands

Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

Context Pasture-woodlands are semi-natural landscapes that result from the combined influences of climate, management, and intrinsic vegetation dynamics. These landscapes are sensitive to future changes in land use and climate, but our ability to predict t ...

Springer2017

Detecting animals in African Savanna with UAVs and the crowds

Stéphane Joost, Devis Tuia

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer new opportunities for wildlife monitoring, with several advantages over traditional field-based methods. They have readily been used to count birds, marine mammals and large herbivores in different environments, tasks ...

Elsevier2017

Multi-scale feedbacks between tree regeneration traits and herbivore behavior explain the structure of pasture-woodland mosaics

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

The pasture-woodlands of Central Europe are low-intensity grazing systems in which the structural richness of dynamic forest-grassland mosaics is causal for their high biodiversity. Distinct mosaic patterns in Picea abies- and Fagus sylvatica-dominated pas ...

Springer Verlag2016

Landscape-scale simulation experiments test Romanian and Swiss management guidelines for mountain pasture-woodland habitat diversity

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer, Ioana Stoicescu

Distinct guidelines have been proposed in Romania and Switzerland for the management of pasture woodlands that either focused on the regulation of grazing pressure (Romanian production perspective) or overall tree cover (Swiss conservation perspective). Ho ...

Elsevier2016

Transplantation of subalpine wood-pasture turfs along a natural climatic gradient reveals lower resistance of unwooded pastures to climate change compared to wooded ones

Alexandre Buttler, Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov, Thomas Spiegelberger

Climate change could impact strongly on cold-adapted mountain ecosystems, but little is known about its interaction with traditional land-use practices. We used an altitudinal gradient to simulate a year-round warmer and drier climate for semi-natural suba ...

Springer2014

Momentum balance of katabatic flow on steep slopes covered with short vegetation

Marc Parlange, Holly Jayne Oldroyd, Gabriel George Katul, Eric Richard Pardyjak

Katabatic flows over alpine mountainous terrain differ from their forested or bare slope counterparts due to the presence of well-ventilated, short vegetation. The impact of a grass canopy and larger-scale pressure perturbations on the one-dimensional mean ...

American Geophysical Union2014

Land management trumps the effects of climate change and elevated CO2 on grassland functioning

Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Aurélie Thébault

Grasslands cover similar to 30% of the Earth's terrestrial surface and provide many ecosystem services. Many grasslands are heavily managed to maximize these services for human benefit, but the outcome of management is anticipated to be increasingly inf ...

Wiley-Blackwell2014

Land use and soil texture effects on organic carbon change in dryland soils, Senegal

Claire Guenat, Assize Touré

Soil organic carbon (SOC) losses due to poor soil management in dryland are now well documented. However, the in- fluence of soil properties on organic carbon change is not well known. The groundnut plant (Arachis hypogaea L.), and the dominant crop system ...

2013

A Contextual Analysis of Land-Use and Vegetation Changes in Two Wooded Pastures in the Swiss Jura Mountains

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Thomas Spiegelberger, Joël Chételat, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer, Kathryn Lannas, Michaël Kalbermatten

This study examines the effects of land-use policies and natural events on the evolution of two wooded pastures in the Jura Mountains in Switzerland between 1934 and 2000. The socioeconomic context and the local conditions were seen as major driving forces ...

Resilience Alliance2013

Modeling Social-Ecological Feedback Effects in the Implementation of Payments for Environmental Services in Pasture-Woodlands

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

An effective implementation of payment for environmental services (PES) must allow for complex interactions of coupled social-ecological systems. We present an integrative study of the pasture-woodland landscape of the Swiss Jura Mountains combining method ...

Resilience Alliance2013

Dynamics of Forage Production in Pasture-woodlands of the Swiss Jura Mountains under Projected Climate Change Scenarios

Alexandre Buttler, Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov, François Gillet, Thomas Spiegelberger, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

Silvopastoral systems of the Swiss Jura Mountains serve as a traditional source of forage and timber in the subalpine vegetation belt, but their vulnerability to land use and climate change puts their future sustainability at stake. We coupled experimental ...

Resilience Alliance2013

Subalpine Pasture-Woodlands in a Changing Climate : the Role of Land Use Type in Ecosystem Resistance to Simulated Climate Change

Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov

Climate change in temperate mountain systems and associated increase in temperature and decrease in precipitation are expected to have strong implications for vegetation productivity, species diversity and carbon turnover in subalpine grasslands. Little is ...

EPFL2013

Past and future landscape dynamics in pasture-woodlands of the Swiss Jura Mountains under climate change

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Thomas Spiegelberger, Joël Chételat, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

Silvopastoral systems are traditional components of the landscape in the Swiss Jura Mountains, and are promising approaches for the sustainable management of mountain areas worldwide. Due to complex vegetation dynamics, pasture-woodlands are very vulnerabl ...

Resilience Alliance2013