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Alternative biome states of African terrestrial vegetation and the potential drivers: A continental-scale study by Linhai Cheng; Nan Lu; Mengyu Wang; Bojie Fu; Zhihong Xu is a Environmental Science article available to read on EtoBox.

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The alternative stable state (ASS) theory provides a plausible framework to explain the spatial distribution of biomes and their dynamics. Existing studies to test the alternative biome states (ABSs) mainly focused on tree-dominated biomes. It is still uncertain whether ABSs are present in a wide range of terrestrial biomes. This study was to examine the ABSs in the terrestrial vegetated areas of Africa and the maintaining factors. The potential landscapes were reconstructed separately for forest, grassland and shrubland using the MODIS Vegetation Continuous Field data along the gradients of temperature, precipitation and aridity index (AI, the ratio of precipitation to potential evapotranspiration). The differences of soil organic carbon density (SOCD), fire count and grazing intensity were compared to test the feedback hypothesis to maintain the ABSs. The results showed that AI performed well in detecting the ABSs at the continental scale of Africa. Forest (at the wetter end) and shrubland (at the drier end) were well separated along the AI axis. Forest had three stable states (i.e. closed forest, woody savanna, and savanna) and shrubland had two stable states (i.e. closed shrubl

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Author

Linhai Cheng; Nan Lu; Mengyu Wang; Bojie Fu; Zhihong Xu

Published

2021

Language

EN

Field

Environmental Science (Physical Sciences)