The Miombo woodlands are declining in both area and value, primarily due to over-harvesting of commonly preferred species. These forests, however, still contain several other species that are potentially of commercial importance. This study aimed to...
Increased anthropogenic pressure on forest resources leads to deforestation and forest degradation, significantly limiting the regeneration capacity of native woody species and consequently the restoration of miombo woodlands in anthropized habitats...
Accurate maps of tree species distributions are necessary for the sustainable management of forests with desired ecological functions. However, image classification methods to produce species distribution maps for supporting sustainable forest manage...
Land use is known to influence the diversity of vascular plants in the Miombo woodlands. However, little is known about the interaction between soil and land use in herbaceous and woody species. We compared the diversity of vascular plants at the plo...
Wildfires threaten natural ecosystems and human livelihoods in the Tanzanian Miombo woodlands. This study presents the first locally calibrated, high-resolution wildfire susceptibility map for the Iringa region, developed using a robust machine learn...
The overexploitation of forest resources in the Lubumbashi Charcoal Production Basin in the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) leads to deforestation and miombo woodlands degradation, threatening local livelihoods. Current fores...
The misappropriation of sustainable forest programs by local communities and the under-utilization of their knowledge are major impediments to the mitigation of deforestation. Within this context, participation has become a principle used in almost a...
Miombo woodlands in Southern Africa are experiencing accelerated changes due to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. In order to formulate sustainable woodland management strategies in the Miombo ecosystem, timely and up-to-date land cover informa...
The Miombo woodland is the most extensive tropical woodland in south-central Africa. However, field sample plot data on forest cover changes, species distribution and carbon stocks in the Miombo ecoregion are inadequate for effective forest managemen...
The quantification of forest above-ground biomass (AGB) is important for such broader applications as decision making, forest management, carbon (C) stock change assessment and scientific applications, such as C cycle modeling. However, there is a gr...
Seasonally dry woodlands are the dominant land cover across southern Africa. They are biodiverse, structurally complex, and important for ecosystem service provision. Species composition and structure vary across the region producing a diverse array...
The miombo woodlands of the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) are increasingly exposed to mining expansion and associated land-use changes. However, the spatial association between mining infrastructure, rural settlements, and...
Miombo woodlands are extensive dry forest ecosystems in central and southern Africa covering ≈2.7 million km2. Despite their vast expanse and global importance for carbon storage, the long-term carbon stocks and dynamics have been poorly researched....
Understanding how land-use change affects habitat fragmentation and connectivity is essential for assessing landscape degradation and conservation effectiveness in protected areas globally. It is particularly acute in tropical protected areas where a...
About 80% of Angola’s forest surface is covered by Miombo and Mopane woodlands, which are explored for diverse activities such as fuelwood and food. This study aimed to assess the recovery dynamics of Miombo and Mopane woodlands after the selec...
The miombo woodland is the most extensive dry forest in the world, with the potential to store substantial amounts of biomass carbon. Efforts to obtain accurate estimates of carbon stocks in the miombo woodlands are limited by a general lack of bioma...
In this study we present general (multiple tree species from several sites) above- and belowground biomass models for trees in the miombo woodlands of Malawi. Such models are currently lacking in the country. The modelling was based on 74 trees compr...
The miombo woodlands of Tanzania have continued to be subjected to deforestation due to mainly agricultural expansion. Knowledge of long-term productivity of the subsequent land use can help to evaluate the sustainability of the existing land managem...
Remote sensing has been widely used to estimate the distribution of foliar nitrogen (N) in a cost-effective manner. Although hyperspectral remote sensing targeting the red edge and shortwave infrared regions has proved successful at estimating foliar...
Population growth in the city of Lubumbashi in the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) is leading to increased energy needs, endangering the balance of the miombo woodland in the rural area referred to as the Lubumbashi charcoal...
Fire strongly impacts the composition and structure of ecosystems, with consequences yet to be understood. We used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data to map fire frequency and fire intensity and investigate their effects on mi...
(1) Background: the Miombo woodlands comprise the most important vegetation from southern Africa and are dominated by tree legumes with an ecology highly driven by fires. Here, we report on the characterization of bacterial communities from the rhizo...
Miombo woodlands (MW) are increasingly experiencing widespread land use and land cover change (LULCC). This study explores the influence of fire, agriculture, and slope variability on LULCC in the miombo of the Beira Corridor. Land use and land cover...
Aboveground biomass (AGB) estimation plays a crucial role in forest management and carbon emission reporting, especially for developing countries wishing to address REDD+ projects. Both passive and active remote-sensing technologies can provide spati...
Application of 3D data derived from images captured using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in forest biomass estimation has shown great potential in reducing costs and improving the estimates. However, such data have never been tested in miombo woodla...
The overexploitation of forest resources in the charcoal production basin of the city of Lubumbashi (DR Congo) is reducing the resilience of miombo woodlands and threatening the survival of the riparian as well as urban human populations that depend...
Angola’s forests are abundant and highly productive with enormous potential to support local needs and exportation. The forests are well distributed across the country, but the existing road network is generally poor and, in some cases, inappro...
The process of land degradation needs to be understood at various spatial and temporal scales in order to protect ecosystem services and communities directly dependent on it. This is especially true for regions in sub-Saharan Africa, where socio econ...
This study assessed the structure and composition of a Miombo woodland stand subjected to selective logging through a forest inventory, measuring all trees with DBH ≥ 10 cm across 34 plots (1 ha each) for diameter, height, stem quality, and health...
Miombo woodland (MW) has several multi-purpose forest species, which are over-exploited for agriculture, charcoal and logging. Industrial plantations are among the promising solutions for sustainable management of MW, but high-yielding MW species are...
Understanding the canopy cover relationship with canopy water content and canopy temperature in the Miombo ecosystem is important for studying the consequences of climate change. To better understand these relationships, we studied the satellite data...
Although charcoal production is a source of income, it is often associated with deforestation due to the felling of trees in rural areas. In this study, we quantified the yield of carbonization in the rural area of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of...
The need to protect forest resources from unsustainable, yet rational, human actions has attracted global attention. This is because smallholder dependence on forests can degrade forest resources and cause deforestation. While efforts to understand f...
Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) and photogrammetric structure from motion (SFM) algorithms can assist in biomass assessments in tropical countries and can be a useful tool in local greenhouse gas accounting. This study assessed the influence of image...
Fires play a significant role in shaping the Miombo woodlands. Understanding how fire affects the Miombo region’s resilience is crucial for ensuring its sustainability. This study evaluated plant composition and structure across different fire...
The southern African Miombo and Mopane ecoregions constitute a unique repository of plant diversity whose diversification and evolutionary history is still understudied. In this work, we assessed the diversity, distribution, and conservation status o...
Fire is a key driver of natural ecosystems in Africa. However, human activity and climate change have altered fire frequency and severity, with negative consequences for biodiversity conservation. Angola ranks among the countries with the highest fir...
Applications of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) to assist in forest inventories have provided promising results in biomass estimation for different forest types. Recent studies demonstrating use of different types of remotely sensed data to assist i...
Lualaba Province, located in the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), consists of five territories with varied dominant land uses: agriculture (Dilolo, Kapanga, and Musumba in the west) and mining (Mutshatsha and Lubudi in the east)....
The use of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data has great potential for monitoring large scale forest above ground biomass (AGB) in the tropics due to the increased ability to retrieve 3D information even under cloud cover. To date;...
Miombo is the most extensive ecosystem in southern Africa, being strongly driven by fire, climate, herbivory, and human activity. Soils are major regulating and supporting services, sequestering nearly 50% of the overall carbon and comprising a set o...
The uncontrolled logging of Pterocarpus tinctorius Welw. in the Kasenga territory in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is of significant socioeconomic benefit, but above all, it is a threat to the stability of forest ecosystems. B...
Securidaca longepedunculata Fresen. is an overexploited forest species in the Lubumbashi region (south-eastern DR Congo), as its roots are highly valued in traditional medicine. Conventional propagation of this species is affected by seed dormancy an...
Chanfuta (Afzelia quanzensis Welw.), Jambire (Millettia stuhlmannii Taub.) and Umbila (Pterocarpus angolensis D.C.) are, among others, three of the main tropical tree species producing commercial timber in Mozambique. The present study employed destr...
The urban trade in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) plays a key role in sustaining livelihoods in the Global South, while also suggesting potential pressure on resource supply systems. This study provides an integrated analysis of NTFP diversity, m...
Village landscapes within an 80 km radius of Lubumbashi (south-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo) are undergoing rapid spatial transformation driven by subsistence agriculture, charcoal production, and mining activities. This study analyzes ho...
In the context of the Lubumbashi Charcoal Production Basin (LCPB), the socio-economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated pressures on populations dependent on forest resources for their subsistence. This study employs a comprehen...
Rodent assemblages have ecological importance in ecosystem functioning and protected area management. Our study examines the patterns of assemblages of rodents across four habitat types (i.e., Miombo woodland, Acacia woodland, grasslands and farmland...
The Okavango River Basin is a hotspot of bat diversity that requires urgent and adequate protection. To advise future conservation strategies, we investigated the relative importance of a range of potential environmental drivers of bat species richne...
Mapping and quantification of forest biomass change are key for forest management and for forests’ contribution to the global carbon budget. We explored the potential of covering this with repeated acquisitions with TanDEM-X. We used an eight-y...
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