Survival and plasticity in Acacia saligna growth across Contrasting management practices and growing niches.

Reforestation and afforestation either through natural regeneration, tree planting or both methods have been globally promoted to motivate ecological restoration of degraded lands and to improve livelihoods. However, moisture stress and infertile soils limit the survival and growth of trees planted for restoration in drier areas. Hence, understanding the factors that determine the restoration success of drylands through tree planting is critical.

Land use and land cover dynamics and ecosystem services values in Kewet district in the central dry lowlands of Ethiopia.

A better comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the tempo-spatial dynamics of land use and cover (LULC) in the dry lowlands areas of Ethiopia is crucial for restoring degraded landscapes. This study aimed at analyzing the trends of LULC changes and determine their ecosystem service values in Kewet district central dry lowlands of Ethiopia using multi-temporal satellite imagery for three periods: 1995, 2008, and 2017. Supervised classification, using the maximum likelihood classifier, was applied to quantify LULC changes.

Volume estimation models for avocado fruit.

Avocado (Persea americana Mill.) is an important horticultural crop and proved to be a very profitable commercial crop for both local consumption and export. The physical characteristics of fruits are an important factor to determine the quality of fruit produced.

Flood signals in tree-ring δO and wood anatomical parameters of Lagerstroemia speciosa: Implications for developing flood management strategies in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh consists of 80% of the flood plain of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river system (GBM), making the country one of the highest flood prone countries of the world. Due to the high rate of discharge of the GBM caused by the summer monsoon and the snowmelt of the Eastern Himalaya and Southern Tibetan Plateau due to climate change, Bangladesh witnessed 16 flood events over 1954-2017. We performed a multiproxy tree-ring analysis to investigate the impact of extreme flood events on tree growth, xylem anatomical parameters and oxygen isotope composition of tree-ring cellulose (δO) in a Bangladeshi moist tropical forest and to establish relationships between water level of the regional rivers and tree-ring parameters.

Overcoming constraints of scaling: Critical and empirical perspectives on agricultural innovation scaling.

Scaling is a ubiquitous concept in agricultural research in the global south as donors require their research grantees to prove that their results can be scaled to impact upon the livelihoods of a large number of beneficiaries. Recent studies on scaling have brought critical perspectives to the rather technocratic tendencies in the agricultural innovations scaling literature. Drawing on theoretical debates on spatial strategies and practical experience of agricultural innovation scaling in Ethiopia, this paper adds to the current debate on what constitutes scaling and how to overcome critical scaling constraints.

Tree-ring δO climate signals vary among tree functional types in South Asian tropical moist forests.

We present the first annually resolved and statistically reliable tree-ring δO (δO) chronologies for the three South Asian tropical moist forest tree species (Chukrasia tabularis A. Juss., Toona ciliata M.

Disentangling the effects of atmospheric CO2 and climate on intrinsic water-use efficiency in South Asian tropical moist forest trees.

Due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the ratio of carbon fixed by assimilation to water lost by transpiration through stomatal conductance (intrinsic water-use efficiency, iWUE) shows a long-term increasing trend globally. However, the drivers of short-term (inter-annual) variability in iWUE of tropical trees are poorly understood. We studied the inter-annual variability in iWUE of three South Asian tropical moist forest tree species (Chukrasia tabularis A.

Multi-century tree-ring precipitation record reveals increasing frequency of extreme dry events in the upper Blue Nile River catchment.

Climate-related environmental and humanitarian crisis are important challenges in the Great Horn of Africa (GHA). In the absence of long-term past climate records in the region, tree-rings are valuable climate proxies, reflecting past climate variations and complementing climate records prior to the instrumental era. We established annually resolved multi-century tree-ring chronology from Juniperus procera trees in northern Ethiopia, the longest series yet for the GHA.

Corrigendum: Earlywood and Latewood Stable Carbon and Oxygen Isotope Variations in Two Pine Species in Southwestern China during the Recent Decades.

[This corrects the article on p. 2050 in vol. 7, PMID: 28119725.

Earlywood and Latewood Stable Carbon and Oxygen Isotope Variations in Two Pine Species in Southwestern China during the Recent Decades.

Stable isotopes in wood cellulose of tree rings provide a high-resolution record of environmental conditions, yet intra-annual analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes and their associations with physiological responses to seasonal environmental changes are still lacking. We analyzed tree-ring stable carbon (δC) and oxygen (δO) isotope variations in the earlywood (EW) and latewood (LW) of pines from a secondary forest () and from a natural forest () in southwestern China. There was no significant difference between δC and δC in , while δC was significantly higher than δC in .

Stable carbon isotope labeling reveals different carry-over effects between functional types of tropical trees in an Ethiopian mountain forest.

We present an intra-annual stable carbon isotope (δ(13)C) study based on a labeling experiment to illustrate differences in temporal patterns of recent carbon allocation to wood structures of two functional types of trees, Podocarpus falcatus (a late-successional evergreen conifer) and Croton macrostachyus (a deciduous broadleaved pioneer tree), in a tropical mountain forest in Ethiopia. Dendrometer data, wood anatomical thin sections, and intra-annual δ(13)C analyses were applied. Isotope data revealed a clear annual growth pattern in both studied species.