Reconciling agriculture, carbon and biodiversity in a savannah transformation frontier.

ABSTRACT: Rapidly rising populations and likely increases in incomes in sub-Saharan Africa make tens of millions of hectares of cropland expansion nearly inevitable, even with large increases in crop yields. Much of that expansion is likely to occur in higher rainfall savannas, with substantial costs to biodiversity and carbon storage. Zambia presents an acute example of this challenge, with an expected tripling of population by 2050, good potential to expand maize and soya bean production, and large areas of relatively undisturbed miombo woodland and associated habitat types of high biodiversity value. Here, we present a new model designed to explore the potential for targeting agricultural expansion in ways that achieve quantitatively optimal trade-offs between competing economic and environmental

SUBMITTER: Estes LD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4978874 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature