What Limits Trees in C4 Grasslands and Savannas

By W. Bond. 2008

953 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dc4d3fe84a37f1676508a2e4a6d141be3c3fd5f8

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In Global and Planetary Change

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

The lanky and the corky: fire‐escape strategies in savanna woody species (2013, background): “The transition from below to above this ‘fire trap’ is a major constriction on tropical savannas (Bond, Cook & Williams 2012; Hoffmann et al. 2012) and is largely dependent on fire regimes (Gill & Ashton 1968; Gignoux, Clobert & Menaut 1997; Bond 2008; Hoffmann et al. 2012; Murphy & Bowman 2012).”
How do small savanna trees avoid stem mortality by fire? The roles of stem diameter, height and bark thickness (2011, background): “…is an important driver of tree dynamics in savannas worldwide because it can limit seedling recruitment and prevent the transition of juvenile trees to the canopy (Prior et al. 2006, Bond 2008, v www.esajournals.org 1 April 2011 v Volume 2(4) v Article 42 Midgley et al. 2010, Murphy et al. 2010).”
Local versus landscape‐scale effects of savanna trees on grasses (2009, background): “In most cases tree and shrub densities are increasing, due to a combination of CO2 fertilization, fire suppression and overgrazing (see Bond 2008 for a recent review).”
Positive feedbacks amplify rates of woody encroachment in mesic tallgrass prairie (2011, background): “…pronounced belowground competition in the upper soil layers (Nippert and Knapp 2007a, b), frequent and intense fires (Knapp et al. 1998, van Wilgen et al. 2003, Briggs et al. 2005, Bond 2008) and predominance of clonal reproduction (Benson and Hartnett 2006, Dalgleish and Hartnett 2006).”
Is there a ‘browse trap’? Dynamics of herbivore impacts on trees and grasses in an African savanna (2014, background): “Savannas are understood to be systems where top-down impacts can have major effects on both tree distributions and structure (Bond 2008).”
Biomass partitioning and root morphology of savanna trees across a water gradient (2012, background): “We concentrated on seedlings because this is the stage at which plants are most sensitive to environmental impacts (Bond 2008; Van Langevelde et al. 2011), and hence, strategies evolved in response to water deficits should be apparent at this stage.”
Flammable biomes dominated by eucalypts originated at the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary. (2011, result): “Our results contrast with the current view that fire-dominated vegetation originated much later, after global climate aridified and the monsoonal biome developed, in the late Miocen”
Abrupt increases in Amazonian tree mortality due to drought–fire interactions (2014, background): “Along the edges of the burned plots, grasses invaded in response to low LAI and high grass seed availability (31, 32).”
Mechanisms of Plant Invasions of North American and European Grasslands (2011, background): “Any attempt to use climate variables to describe the geographical extent of grasslands is doomed to failure, primarily because grazing and/or fire and now human intervention determine the spatial extent of these ecosystems (Ellenberg 1988, Bond 2008).”
Cascading biodiversity and functional consequences of a global change–induced biome switch (2012, background): “…with woody encroachment include changes in carbon stocks (and thus sequestration potential), nutrient cycling and hydrology (Asner et al., 2004; Bond, 2008), and at regional scales, there is the potential for large feedbacks to the earth-atmosphere system (Hoffmann et al., 2002; Beerling &…”
Alien plant invasions in tropical and sub-tropical savannas: patterns, processes and prospects (2010, background): “in land-use (Bond 2008), and increased CO2 levels leading to tree encroachment and thickening in grassdominated systems (Bond and Midgley 2000; Bond 2008).”
Growth of N2‐fixing African savanna Acacia species is constrained by below‐ground competition with grass (2010, background): “Full understanding of the reasons for the seemingly stable coexistence of trees and grasses in savannas and the consequent apparent sharing of resources between these two plant life-forms remains elusive (Bond 2008).”
Native ungulates of diverse body sizes collectively regulate long‐term woody plant demography and structure of a semi‐arid savanna (2013, background): “Isolating the effects of browsing on savanna tree dynamics requires long-term, controlled herbivore exclusion experiments, which are rare in Africa (Bond 2008).”