Fuel, fire and cattle in African highlands: traditional management maintains a mosaic heathland landscape

摘要

1. Shrubland ecosystems are often inherently flammable due to a canopy structure favourable for fire propagation. At the same time, the fuel bed is not spatially uniform, but a complex mix of shrubs and herbaceous vegetation that will change with time since fire. These patterns are further influenced by megaherbivores capable of consuming large quantities of biomass that otherwise would enter the fuel bed, but the net effects for temporal thresholds of flammability are poorly known. 2. We quantified post-fire fuel succession and effects of free-ranging cattle in high-elevation Erica shrublands in Ethiopia where traditional fire management is still practised above the treeline at 3500 m, despite being challenged by authorities. 3. We found a near-linear accumulation of canopy fuel at 2·6 Mg ha~(-1) year~(-1), but stands