Browsing by Author "Mbilinyi, Boniface"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

Conservation implications of deforestation across an elevational gradient in the Eastern Arc Mountains, Tanzania
(Elsevier, 2009-11) Burgess, Neil D.; Mbilinyi, Boniface; Gereau, Roy E.; Hall, Jaclyn; Lovett, Jon
Deforestation is a major threat to the conservation of biodiversity, especially within global centers of endemism for plants and animals. Elevation, the major environmental gradient in mountain regions of the world, produces a rapid turnover of species, where some species may exist only in narrow elevational ranges. We use newly compiled datasets to assess the conservation impact of deforestation on threatened trees across an elevational gradient within the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania. The Eastern Arc has suffered an estimated 80% total loss in historical forest area and has lost 25% of forest area since 1955. Forest loss has not been even across all elevations. The upper montane zone (>1800 m) has lost 52% of its paleoecological forest area, 6% since 1955. Conversely, the submontane habitat (800–1200 m) has lost close to 93% of its paleoecological extent, 57% since 1955. A list of 123 narrowly endemic Tanzanian East- ern Arc tree taxa with defined and restricted elevational ranges was compiled and analyzed in regard to mountain block locations, elevational range, and area of forest within each 100 m elevational band. Half of these taxa have lost more than 90% of paleoecological forest habitat in their elevational range. When elevational range is considered, 98 (80%) of these endemic forest trees should have their level of extinc- tion threat elevated on the IUCN Red List. Conservation efforts in montane hotspots need to consider the extent of habitat changes both within and across elevations and target conservation and restoration efforts throughout these ecosystems’ entire elevational ranges.
Exploring the future land use- biodiversity-climate nexus in East Africa: an application of participatory scenario analysis
(Whiterose University, 2015-11) Capitani, Claudia; Norfolk, Olivia; Platts, Philip; Burgess, Neil; Mukama, Kusaga; Mbilinyi, Boniface; Malugu, Isaac; Munishi, Pantaleo; Marchant, Rob
Climate change and land-use-land-cover change (LULCC) are expected to have major impacts on global biodiversity. In highly diverse tropical moist forests, future biodiversity trajectories will also depend on political and societal will to undertake the changes needed to reduce those impacts. We present a framework to build participatory spatially- explicit scenarios that can be used to analyse the biodiversity-climate-land-change trade- offs, and we applied at different scales in East Africa. In Tanzania, under the business-as- usual pattern of economic growth, the Eastern Arc Mountains forests and biodiversity will be heavily impacted on, with increasing pressure on protected areas. Increasing variability of rainfall and temperature are likely to impact on where the LCLCC are going to be, with the mountains likely to be refuges that are even more important for local communities. That may intensify impacts on biodiversity. In Taita Hills (Kenya) and Jimma Highlands (Ethiopia), stakeholders expected that adaptation interventions to climate change would generally improve biodiversity state. Preliminary data on birds community diversity in Taita Hills showed that though agroforestry system supports higher diversity than natural forest, species richness of rarer forest specialists remained highest within natural forests. Anticipating future conservation and agriculture interaction under climate change may contribute to set spatial priorities for intervention sites. Further investigations are required that could benefit from integrating local stakeholders’ perceptions and visions for the future.
From local scenarios to national maps: a participatory framework for envisioning the future of Tanzania
(Resilience Alliance Inc, 2016) Capitani, Claudia; Mukama, Kusaga; Mbilinyi, Boniface; Malugu, Isaac O.; Munishi, Pantaleo K. T.; Burgess, Neil D.; Platts, Philip J.; Sallu, Susannah M.; Marchant, Robert
Tackling societal and environmental challenges requires new approaches that connect top-down global oversight with bottom-up subnational knowledge. We present a novel framework for participatory development of spatially explicit scenarios at national scale that model socioeconomic and environmental dynamics by reconciling local stakeholder perspectives and national spatial data. We illustrate results generated by this approach and evaluate its potential to contribute to a greater understanding of the relationship between development pathways and sustainability. Using the lens of land use and land cover changes, and engaging 240 stakeholders representing subnational (seven forest management zones) and the national level, we applied the framework to assess alternative development strategies in the Tanzania mainland to the year 2025, under either a business as usual or a green development scenario. In the business as usual scenario, no productivity gain is expected, cultivated land expands by ~ 2% per year (up to 88,808 km2), with large impacts on woodlands and wetlands. Despite legal protection, encroachment of natural forest occurs along reserve borders. Additional wood demand leads to degradation, i.e., loss of tree cover and biomass, up to 80,426 km2 of wooded land. The alternative green economy scenario envisages decreasing degradation and deforestation with increasing productivity (+10%) and implementation of payment for ecosystem service schemes. In this scenario, cropland expands by 44,132 km2 and the additional degradation is limited to 35,778 km2. This scenario development framework captures perspectives and knowledge across a diverse range of stakeholders and regions. Although further effort is required to extend its applicability, improve users’ equity, and reduce costs the resulting spatial outputs can be used to inform national level planning and policy implementation associated with sustainable development, especially the REDD+ climate mitigation strategy.
Linking science with stakeholders to sustain natural capital
(2007) Mwakalila, Shadrack; Burgess, Neil; Ricketts, Taylor; Olwero, Nasser; Swetnam, Ruth; Mbilinyi, Boniface; Marchant, Rob; Mtalo, Felix; White, Sue; Munishi, Pantaleo; Marshall, Andrew; Malimbwi, Rogers; Smith, Celina; Jambiya, George; Marshall, Andrew; Madoffe, Seif; Fisher, Brendan; Kajembe, George; Morse-Jones, Sian; Kulindwa, Kassim; Green, Jonathan; Balmford, Andrew
Towards regional, error-bounded landscape carbon storage estimates for data-deficient areas of the world
(PLOS ONE, 2012-09-14) Willcock, Simon; Phillips, Oliver L.; Platts, Philip J; Balmford, Andrew; Burgess, Neil D.; Lovett, Jon C.; Ahrends, Antje; Mbilinyi, Boniface; Lewis, Simon L.
Monitoring landscape carbon storage is critical for supporting and validating climate change mitigation policies. These may be aimed at reducing deforestation and degradation, or increasing terrestrial carbon storage at local, regional and global levels. However, due to data-deficiencies, default global carbon storage values for given land cover types such as ‘lowland tropical forest’ are often used, termed ‘Tier 1 type’ analyses by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Such estimates may be erroneous when used at regional scales. Furthermore uncertainty assessments are rarely provided leading to estimates of land cover change carbon fluxes of unknown precision which may undermine efforts to properly evaluate land cover policies aimed at altering land cover dynamics. Here, we present a repeatable method to estimate carbon storage values and associated 95% confidence intervals (CI) for all five IPCC carbon pools (aboveground live carbon, litter, coarse woody debris, belowground live carbon and soil carbon) for data-deficient regions, using a combination of existing inventory data and systematic literature searches, weighted to ensure the final values are regionally specific. The method meets the IPCC ‘Tier 2’ reporting standard. We use this method to estimate carbon storage over an area of33.9 million hectares of eastern Tanzania, reporting values for 30 land cover types. We estimate that this area stored 6.33 (5.92–6.74) Pg C in the year 2000. Carbon storage estimates for the same study area extracted from five published Africa-wide or global studies show a mean carbon storage value of ,50% of that reported using our regional values, with four of the five studies reporting lower carbon storage values. This suggests that carbon storage may have been underestimated for this region of Africa. Our study demonstrates the importance of obtaining regionally appropriate carbon storage estimates, and shows how such values can be produced for a relatively low investment.
Watershed level baseline assessment in the Mkindo watershed, Wami basin, Tanzania
(Stockholm Environment Institute, 2012-07) de Bruin, Annemarieke; Cinderby, Steve; Mbilinyi, Boniface; Mahoo, Henry; Barron, Jennie
This report describes the results of a baseline assessment of current livelihood strategies in the Mkindo watershed of the Wami River Basin in Tanzania. The work is part of the IWMI project entitled ‘Agri- cultural Water Management Solutions’ which aims to analyse the impacts and potential of AWM inter- ventions to improve livelihoods at the community, and watershed scales and assess the opportunities, constraints and impacts of the use of AWM technologies. Similar work has been done in two other watersheds, the Nariarlé watershed in Burkina Faso and the Jaldhaka watershed in West Bengal, India. The work in the Mkindo watershed was done during November and December 2009 in cooperation with Soil Water Management Research Group of Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tan- zania. After this baseline assessment different AWM scenarios 1 were analysed .