The DOI matches its Crossref record; 84 of the 84 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
What controls South African vegetation — climate or fire?
Open accessAbstract
The role of fire in determining biome distribution in South Africa has long been debated. Acocks labelled veld types that he thought were ‘fire climax’ as ‘false’. He hypothesised that their current extent was due to extensive forest clearance by Iron Age farmers. We tested the relative importance of fire and climate in determining ecosystem characteristics by simulating potential vegetation of South Africa with and without fire using a Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM). The simulations suggest that most of the eastern half of the country could support much higher stem biomass without fire and that the vegetation would be dominated by trees instead of grasses. Fynbos regions in mesic winter rainfall areas would also become tree dominated. We collated results of long term fire exclusion studies to further test the relative importance of fire and climate. These show that grassy ecosystems with rainfall > 650mm tend towards fire-sensitive forests with fire excluded. Areas below 650mm showed changes in tree density and size but no trend of changing composition to forest. We discuss recent evidence that C4 grasslands first appeared between 6 and 8M years BP, long before the appearance of modern humans. However these grassy ecosystems are among the most recently developed biomes on the planet. We briefly discuss the importance of fire in promoting their spread in the late Tertiary.
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Cites
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Ecology: The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance
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Global vegetation change through the Miocene/Pliocene boundary
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Acocks, J. P. H. (1953) · Govt. Printer eBooks · Cited by 2,151
Cramer, W., Bondeau, A., Woodward, F. I., Prentice, I. C., Betts, R. A., Brovkin, V., Cox, P. M., Fisher, V., Foley, J. A., Friend, A. D., et al. (2001) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2486.2001.00383.x · Cited by 2,002
Self-citationWhite, F. (1983) · Natural Resources Research · Cited by 1,416
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Large-scale impoverishment of Amazonian forests by logging and fire
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Cited by
Determinants of woody cover in African savannas.
Sankaran, M., Hanan, N. P., Scholes, R. J., Ratnam, J., Augustine, D. J., Cade, B. S., Gignoux, J., Higgins, S. I., Le Roux, X., Ludwig, F., et al. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature04070 · Cited by 1,963
The global distribution of ecosystems in a world without fire
Bond, W. J., Woodward, F. I., & Midgley, G. F. (2005) · New Phytologist · doi:10.1111/j.1469-8137.2004.01252.x · Cited by 1,942
Self-citationWhat Limits Trees in C4 Grasslands and Savannas?
Bond, W. J. (2008) · Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics · doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.39.110707.173411 · Cited by 909
Self-citationBrazil's neglected biome: The South Brazilian Campos
OVERBECK, G., MULLER, S., FIDELIS, A., PFADENHAUER, J., PILLAR, V, BLANCO, C., BOLDRINI, I., BOTH, R., & FORNECK, E. (2007) · Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics · doi:10.1016/j.ppees.2007.07.005 · Cited by 784
Woody cover in African savannas: the role of resources, fire and herbivory.
Sankaran, M., Ratnam, J., & Hanan, N. (2008) · Global Ecology and Biogeography · doi:10.1111/j.1466-8238.2007.00360.x · Cited by 589
Metadata
- Authors
- Bond, W. J., Midgley, G. F., & Woodward, F. I.
- Venue
- South African Journal of Botany
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2003-03
- Volume
- 69
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 79-91
- ISSN
- 0254-6299 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W300989193
- Cited by
- 364
- References
- 84
- FWCI
- 10.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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