S. Ringrose et al., ANALYSIS OF SOIL ORGANIC-CARBON AND VEGETATION COVER TRENDS ALONG THEBOTSWANA KALAHARI TRANSECT, Journal of arid environments, 38(3), 1998, pp. 379-396
Determination of trends in soil organic carbon (SOC) and vegetation co
ver along savanna ecosystem moisture gradients is critical to the unde
rstanding of ecosystem functioning and global change. Field results fr
om 57 sites along the Botswana Kalahari Transect (BKT) showed general
increases in both SOC and vegetation cover components along the temper
ature/moisture gradient. However, details in both SOC and woody cover
trends revealed an area of relatively declining values in the central
Kalahari. Image classification using TM single band data as input valu
es confirmed the existence of an anomalously low woody cover area in t
he north-central Kalahari, within an area mapped as northern Kalahari
tree and shrub savanna. It is postulated that the occurrence of such a
zone of low shrubs in a gradient of otherwise increasing tree height
and structural complexity may result mainly from edaphic factors, beca
use of the co-incidence of near surface calcrete. However, the effects
of fire and heavy grazing also influence the extent of low above-grou
nd biomass, at least locally. Attempts were made to examine the extent
to which soil organic carbon and vegetation components can be predict
ed using Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery, to increase potentially the num
ber of sites in the BKT database. As a result of correlation and regre
ssion analyses, it was determined that the imagery-based SOC indexes o
f the literature were not useful in the Kalahari environment because o
f the extremely low SOC values encountered. Results of multiple regres
sion analysis confirmed that woody vegetation cover could be predicted
mainly through the use of TM3 single band radiance values throughout
the BKT even during a non-drought period. Woody vegetation cover could
be predicted to a lesser extent by the Transformed Normalised Vegetat
ion Index. As high correlation coefficients were found between woody v
egetation cover and SOC, the density of woody cover as derived from TM
3 data may be taken as a surrogate for relative SOC abundance, Because
this method is indirect, field checking will be required to verify re
sults. (C) 1998 Academic Press Limited.