The interest in forest productivity estimation has increased in the last years as it is very important for forest management and the estimation of carbon stock, wood and non-wood products, etc. However, there are no estimates of productivity and stored volume and carbon of different forest cover types throughout the Amhara region, Ethiopia. The objectives of this study are the estimating of volume, aboveground carbon and net primary productivity (NPP) of the Amhara region.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission measurements from livestock excreta in Africa are limited. We measured CH4 and N2O emissions from excreta of six Boran (Bos indicus) and six Friesian (Bos taurus) steers near Nairobi, Kenya. The steers were fed one of three diets (T1 [chaffed wheat straw], T2 [T1 + Calliandra calothyrsus Meissner – 0.2% live weight per day], and T3 [T1 + calliandra – 0.4% live weight every 2 d]). The T1 diet is similar in quality to typical diets in the region. Calliandra is a leguminous fodder tree promoted as a feed supplement.

Megaherbivores (>1000 kg) are critical for ecosystem health and function, but face population collapse and extinction globally. The future of these megaherbivore-impoverished ecosystems is difficult to predict, though many studies have demonstrated increasing representation of C3 woody plants. These studies rely on direct observational data, however, and tools for assessing decadal-scale changes in African ecology without observation are lacking.

Analysis of multi-year nutrient enrichment experiments carried out on 45 global grassland sites show that an addition of an increasing number of nutrients leads to a reduction in plant species diversity, and competition for multiple below-ground resources promotes plant species diversity.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest agricultural land-retirement program in the United States, providing many environmental benefits, including wildlife habitat and improved air, water, and soil quality. Since 2007, however, CRP area has declined by over 25% nationally with much of this land returning to agriculture. Despite this trend, it is unclear what types of CRP land are being converted, to what crops, and where. All of these specific factors greatly affect environmental impacts.

In arid and semi-arid regions, grassland degradation has become a major environmental and economic problem, but little information is available on the response of grassland productivity to both climate change and grazing intensity. By developing a grazing module in a process-based ecosystem model, the dynamic land ecosystem model (DLEM), we explore the roles of climate change, elevated CO2, and varying grazing intensities in affecting aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) across different grassland sites in Mongolia.