Changes in carbon stocks in central and southern Africa’s miombo woodlands

miombo woodlands

A new systematic map of the evidence of changes in carbon stocks in miombo woodlands over the past 50 years has just been published in Environmental Evidence in a collaborative project between OxLEL, CIFOR, the Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Zimbabwe, the Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique, and Copperbelt University, Kitwe, Zambia, funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfiD).

Following a rigorous systematic evaluation process guided by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, 11,565 records were retrieved from bibliographic databases and grey literature sources and screened for relevance against a published Protocol (Syampungani et al 2014). The majority of studies included in the final analyses trace temporal changes in biomass and carbon in the miombo woodlands. Studies reported a wide range (1.3–95.7 Mg ha⁻¹) of above-ground carbon in old-growth miombo woodland. Variation between years and rainfall zones and across conservation area types was large. One of the major findings of the review were that an insufficient number of robust studies met the strict inclusion criteria from across the miombo region which meant that pool carbon stocks and trends in miombo old growth could not be pooled in a robust meta analysis. To overcome this research gap, future studies in miombo woodlands should take longer term observational approaches with more systematic, permanent sampling designs.

An interactive data visualisation of the systematic map is available elsewhere on the OxLEL website (Evidence Maps).