Locations Africa

High-intensity fires can significantly reduce woody cover in African savannas
Source: Journal of Applied Ecology

Limahuli Valley, Kauai
July 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of a scientific idea hatched in a distant valley along Kauai Island’s northern coast in the central Pacific. The 2006 conception was preceded by ten other years of research on the chemical properties of plant canopies in far flung environments ranging from desert shrublands to tropical rainforests. That preceding decade had cumulatively yielded just a hint that a tree-of-life approach to studying forests might be possible at the mother of all scales – Earth’s biosphere.

Consistent global-scale patterns in canopy chemical traits of humid tropical forests
Source: Global Change Biology

Animal assemblages are often viewed as a product of the ecosystems in which they live, but in reality they are often the reason an ecosystem looks the way it does. The roles of animals in shaping ecosystems are so important that two special issues recently published in PNAS and Ecography focus specifically on megafauna (literately translated as ‘large animal’) and the important roles they play in ecosystems, as well as what we may have lost through their extinctions across much of the globe.
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