The nomenclatural status and typification of the names , , var. , var. , var.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the central and northern highlands of Ethiopia, native forest and forest biodiversity is almost confined to sacred groves associated with churches. Local communities rely on these 'church forests' for essential ecosystem services including shade and fresh water but little is known about their region-wide distribution and conservation value. We (1) performed the first large-scale spatially-explicit assessment of church forests, combining remote-sensing and field data, to assess the number of forests, their size, shape, isolation and woody plant species composition, (2) determined their plant communities and related these to environmental variables and potential natural vegetation, (3) identified the main challenges to biodiversity conservation in view of plant population dynamics and anthropogenic disturbances, and (4) present guidelines for management and policy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBirdLife International's Important Bird Areas (IBA) program is the most developed global system for identifying sites of conservation priority There have been few assessments, however, of the conservation value of IBAs for nonavian taxa. We combined past data with extensive new survey results for Uganda's IBAs in the most comprehensive assessment to date of the wider biodiversity value of a tropical country's IBA network. The combined data set included more than 35,000 site x species records for birds, butterflies, and woody plants at 86 Ugandan sites (23,400 km2), including 29 of the country's 30 IBAs, with data on additional taxa for many sites.
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