Observation, Monitoring and Analysis of Savannah Ecosystems

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land – Observation and Monitoring".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2025) | Viewed by 1039

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Geography, Mary Immaculate College, South Circular Road, V94 VN26 Limerick, Ireland
Interests: remote sensing; land cover classification; scales of observation; environmental applications
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Guest Editor
Department of Natural Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, All Saints Building, Manchester M15 6BH, UK
Interests: remote sensing; land degradation; AI algorithms
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Guest Editor
1. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Pretoria 0001, South Africa
2. Department of Plant and Soil Science, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
Interests: remote sensing; precision agriculture; biodiversity conservations; data analytics
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Savannah ecosystems represent a precious semi-natural resource, covering approximately 20% of the Earth’s land surface and supporting the same proportion of the human population. Savannahs deliver wide-ranging ecosystem services, including biodiversity, wood production, and tourism, and they notably account for around a quarter of global carbon uptake. Savannahs are spatially complex environments, involving widely varying arrangements of woody and grassy cover, and they are influenced in particular by climate, fire regimes, herbivory, and human disturbance. The effective safeguarding and appropriate exploitation of savannahs rely on the accurate knowledge of savannah distributions and dynamics, as well as a clear understanding of savannah processes and drivers. This Special Issue presents the latest research on observing, monitoring, and analyzing savannah ecosystems. Papers are welcome to cover any aspect of savannah research, with example topics including:

  • Observation using field-based and/or remote sensing approaches;
  • Mapping, monitoring, and prediction of savannah distributions;
  • Ecosystem processes;
  • Land degradation;
  • Bush encroachment;
  • Drivers of change;
  • Relationship between human activity and natural environment;
  • Ecosystem services such as carbon uptake, biodiversity, and tourism.

Prof. Dr. Paul Aplin
Dr. Elias Symeonakis
Prof. Dr. Moses Azong Cho
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • savannah
  • monitoring
  • degradation
  • biodiversity
  • climate
  • human activity

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 700 KiB  
Article
Tree Canopies Drive δ13C and δ15N Patterns in Mediterranean Wood Pastures of the Iberian Peninsula
by Mercedes Ibañez, Salvador Aljazairi, María José Leiva, Cristina Chocarro, Roland A. Werner, Jaleh Ghashghaie and Maria-Teresa Sebastià
Land 2025, 14(6), 1135; https://doi.org/10.3390/land14061135 - 22 May 2025
Abstract
Mediterranean wood pastures are the result of traditional silvo-pastoral uses that shaped these ecosystems into a mosaic of trees and open grassland. This ecosystem structure is generally associated with increased soil fertility under tree canopies. However, the response of herbaceous plant functional types [...] Read more.
Mediterranean wood pastures are the result of traditional silvo-pastoral uses that shaped these ecosystems into a mosaic of trees and open grassland. This ecosystem structure is generally associated with increased soil fertility under tree canopies. However, the response of herbaceous plant functional types (PFTs)—grasses, legumes, and non-legume forbs—to these heterogeneous microenvironments (under the canopy vs. open grassland) remains largely unknown, particularly regarding carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) acquisition and use. Even less is known about how different tree species and environmental conditions influence these responses. In this study, we aim to assess how tree canopies influence carbon and nitrogen cycling by comparing the effects of traditional oak stands and pine plantations on herbaceous PFTs and soil dynamics. For that we use C and N content and natural isotopic abundances (δ13C and δ15N) as proxies for biogeochemical cycling. Our results show that ecosystem C and N patterns depend not only on herbaceous PFTs and the presence or absence of tree canopies but also on tree species identity and environmental conditions, including climate. In particular, pine-dominated plantations exhibited lower nitrogen availability compared to those dominated by oak, suggesting that oak stands may contribute more effectively to enhance soil fertility in Mediterranean wood pastures. Furthermore, the canopy effect was more pronounced under harsher environmental conditions, highlighting the role of trees in buffering environmental stress, particularly in arid regions. This suggests that changes in tree cover and tree species may drive complex changes in ecosystem C and N storage and cycling. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Observation, Monitoring and Analysis of Savannah Ecosystems)
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