Community assembly processes in miombo woodland

Tropical savanna woodlands are vast in global extent, providing vital habitat for large animals, stocking substantial carbon, and providing critical resources for local communities. Miombo is the world’s largest savanna, covering 2.7 million kilometers across southern Africa. Yet, there are no long-term ecological dynamics plots of any size in the miombo, and more broadly, only one of 71 Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGeo) plots, which focuses on understanding the development and maintenance of biodiversity, is in tropical dry forest.

Focusing on Zambia as the core of the miombo, the projects aims to to establish a 36-hectare long-term forest dynamics plot in the miombo which will meet ForestGeo standards, providing a critical resource for sub-Saharan African botanists and ecologists more broadly. It also seeks to determine how disturbance impacts the age and growth structure of miombo, testing the theory that miombo is a subclimax habitat type. Furthermore, through careful testing, to quantify the role of plant traits and environmental factors in determining the spatial structure of miombo tree communities. Overall, the project hopes to deliver a fundamental advance in the understanding of how miombo plant communities function and the means for the long-term monitoring of these communities to understand how they will be affected by climate change.