IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v7y2018i1p8-d127074.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Berenty Reserve—A Gallery Forest in Decline in Dry Southern Madagascar—Towards Forest Restoration

Author

Listed:
  • Vanessa Winchester

    (School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK)

  • Kate Hardwick

    (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Wellcome Trust Millennium Building, Wakehurst, Ardingly, West Sussex RH17 6TN, UK)

  • Hantanarina Rasamimanana

    (Ecole Normale Supérieur, University of Antananarivo, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar)

  • Sahoby M. Raharison

    (Lycée Ambohimalaza Miray, Cisco Antananarivo, Avaradrano, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar)

  • Anne Mertl-Millhollen

    (Department of Anthropology, 128 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1218, USA)

  • Holger Gärtner

    (Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland)

  • Janet McCrae

    (20 Aston Street, Oxford, OX4 1EP, UK)

Abstract

Berenty Reserve, a fully protected gallery forest beside the Mandrare River is renowned for its lemurs, but the continuous canopy of the main forest is shrinking, fragmenting and degrading. The aim of this study, before any restoration can be considered, is to investigate why canopy-cover is declining and define the forest’s vegetation status and composition. Our study includes analysis of tamarind age (the dominant species) and regeneration, forest extent, climate and soil. Measurement of trunk circumference and annual rings indicated a median age of 190 years, near the accepted maximum for tamarinds. There is no regeneration of tamarind seedlings under the canopy and an invasive vine, Cissus quadrangularis suffocates any regeneration on the forest margins. A vegetation survey, based on fifteen transects, broadly characterized three forest areas: continuous canopy near the river, transitional canopy with fewer tall trees, and degraded dryland; the survey also provided a list of the 18 most common tree species. Ring counts of flood-damaged roots combined with measurement to the riverbank show that erosion rates, up to 19.5 cm/year, are not an immediate threat to forest extent. The highly variable climate shows no trend and analysis of forest soil indicates compatibility with plant growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Vanessa Winchester & Kate Hardwick & Hantanarina Rasamimanana & Sahoby M. Raharison & Anne Mertl-Millhollen & Holger Gärtner & Janet McCrae, 2018. "Berenty Reserve—A Gallery Forest in Decline in Dry Southern Madagascar—Towards Forest Restoration," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-19, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:7:y:2018:i:1:p:8-:d:127074
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/7/1/8/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/7/1/8/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rubin Sagar & Ariadna Mondragon-Botero & Francine Dolins & Bryn Morgan & Thuy Phuong Vu & Janet McCrae & Vanessa Winchester, 2021. "Forest Restoration at Berenty Reserve, Southern Madagascar: A Pilot Study of Tree Growth Following the Framework Species Method," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-18, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:7:y:2018:i:1:p:8-:d:127074. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.