Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Conservation International's science is the foundation for all our work. Our global science team is dedicated to advancing conservation science — pursuing actionable knowledge and amplifying it through partnerships and outreach.
To date, Conservation International has published more than 1,300 peer-reviewed articles, many in leading journals including Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is an archive of our most recent research:
Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa
Z. S. Venter, M. D. Cramer, H.-J. Hawkins
Nature Communications, 9
June 11, 2018
While global deforestation induced by human land use has been quantified, the drivers and extent of simultaneous woody plant encroachment (WPE) into open areas are only regionally known. WPE has important consequences for ecosystem functioning, global carbon balances and human economies. Here we report, using high-resolution satellite imagery, that woody vegetation cover over sub-Saharan Africa increased by 8% over the past three decades and that a diversity of drivers, other than CO2, were able to explain 78% of the spatial variation in this trend. A decline in burned area along with warmer, wetter climates drove WPE, although this has been mitigated in areas with high population growth rates, and high and low extremes of herbivory, specifically browsers. These results confirm global greening trends, thereby bringing into question widely held theories about declining terrestrial carbon balances and desert expansion. Importantly, while global drivers such as climate and CO2 may enhance the risk of WPE, managing fire and herbivory at the local scale provides tools to mitigate continental WPE.
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Venter, Z. S., Cramer, M. D., & Hawkins, H.-J. (2018). Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa. Nature Communications, 9(1). doi:10.1038/s41467-018-04616-8
