Effects of increasing aridity and drought frequency on a biodiversity dependent savanna socio-ecological systems: scenarios for a surface water driven protected area and its periphery – SAVARID

In Southern Africa, the predicted increase in aridity will increase uncertainty of resource availability in space and time (surface water and forage), as well as decrease primary production. The land use mosaic should evolve towards more pastoralism and the role of protected areas could be crucial as one of the land-use options. Understanding the responses of the key component of these savanna systems to the increasing variability of rainfall in time and space is of primary importance to anticipate biome shifts, and the loss of identity of the biodiversity based savanna socio-ecological systems. The project will thus address the management of protected areas and their adequacy to sustainably meet their original biodiversity conservation objectives in the face of climate change as well as the role of protected areas as ecosystem services providers for their broader socio-ecological system.
Studying the effects of climate change on biotic interactions is necessary to understand the response of ecosystem functions and their associated services. Our general objective here is to predict possible trajectories of a biodiversity-based socio-ecological system (protected area and its periphery) through understanding the functional relationships between the key biotic drivers of semi-arid African savannas (plants, large herbivores and humans) in response to variability and uncertainty in rainfall and surface water. Although the decrease in resource and increase in uncertainty may lead to increase in conflict locally, we hypothesise that the new constraints imposed on the various production systems may create the conditions for promoting a new integrated land-use system based on sustainable wildlife utilisation and biodiversity valuation.
The study will be carried out within the Hwange LTER (Zone Atelier Hwange), thus benefiting from existing long-term data, field experiment facilities, as well as strong collaborations between researchers, managers and the rural communities. The consortium gathered for this project is pluri-disciplinary and international, has common past research experience and a long working experience in African savanna. These attributes thus offer a good feasibility and a high international visibility for this project.