Heterogeneity in African savanna elephant distributions and their impacts on trees in Kruger National Park, South Africa.

ABSTRACT: Though elephants are a major cause of savanna tree mortality and threaten vulnerable tree species, managing their impact remains difficult, in part because relatively little is known about how elephant impacts are distributed throughout space.This is exacerbated by uncertainty about what determines the distribution of elephants themselves, as well as whether the distribution of elephants is even informative for understanding the distribution of their impacts.To better understand the factors that underlie elephant impacts, we modeled elephant distributions and their damage to trees with respect to soil properties, water availability, and vegetation in Kruger National Park, South Africa, using structural equation modeling.We found that bull elephants and mixed herds differed markedly in thei

SUBMITTER: Abraham JO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8131780 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature