15
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Restoration of degraded landscapes for ecosystem services in North-Western Ethiopia

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Establishing exclosures has become common in Ethiopia, especially in the central and northern highlands, where they serve as a response to persistent forest degradation, affecting forest resources and ecosystem services. We investigated changes in vegetation composition, aboveground biomass and soil properties after establishing an exclosure on degraded communal grazing land in Aba-Gerima watershed, North-Western Ethiopia. We selected 4-yr-old exclosure and paired the selected exclosure with an adjacent communal grazing land. In the exclosure, we recorded 46 plant species representing 32 families, whereas we recorded 18 plant species representing 13 families in the adjacent communal grazing lands. Most of the identified woody species are economically important. We observed significant differences between the exclosure and adjacent grazing land in woody species richness, diversity and evenness. Exclosure displayed higher woody species density, basal area and aboveground woody biomass compared to the adjacent grazing land. Landscape position influenced vegetation composition, richness and diversity in the exclosure and adjacent grazing land. Significant differences between the exclosure and adjacent grazing land in soil properties were detected. The influence of landscape positions on soil properties was not consistent. At foot slope position, in the 0- to 15-cm and 15- to 30-cm depths, soil organic carbon and nitrogen content detected in exclosure were significantly higher when compared to the values observed in the adjacent grazing land. However, differences at mid and upper slope positions were not significant. The results support that the establishment of exclosures on degraded lands could support the restoration of degraded native vegetation and soil properties, which consequently enhance the ecosystem services that can be obtained from degraded lands.

          Related collections

          Most cited references48

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Article: not found

          A method of establishing groups of equal amplitude in plant sociology based on similarity of species and its application to analyses of the vegetation on Danish commons

            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Human impact on the environment in the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands—a state of the art

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              Effectiveness of exclosures to restore degraded soils as a result of overgrazing in Tigray, Ethiopia

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Heliyon
                Heliyon
                Heliyon
                Elsevier
                2405-8440
                29 August 2018
                August 2018
                29 August 2018
                : 4
                : 8
                : e00764
                Affiliations
                [a ]International Water Management Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
                [b ]Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute, Bahir-Dar, Ethiopia
                Author notes
                []Corresponding author. w.bori@ 123456cgiar.org
                Article
                S2405-8440(18)30732-1 e00764
                10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00764
                6121161
                30186984
                6ef25ad2-7618-4130-b470-5588c267aa36
                © 2018 The Authors

                This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

                History
                : 19 February 2018
                : 9 July 2018
                : 24 August 2018
                Categories
                Article

                environmental science,geography
                environmental science, geography

                Comments

                Comment on this article