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Two Decades of Change in Ghanaian Forests

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Two Decades of Change in Ghanaian Forests Two decades of change in Ghanaian forests Sophie Fauset Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Geography May 2012 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own, except where work which has formed part of jointly authored publications has been included. The contribution of the candidate and the other authors to this work has been explicitly indicated below. The candidate confirms that appropriate credit has been given within the thesis where reference has been made to the work of others. Chapter 2: Fauset, S., Baker, T.R., Lewis, S.L., Feldpausch, T.R., Affum-Baffoe, K., Foli, E.G., Hamer, K.C. & Swaine, M.D. (2012). Drought-induced shifts in the floristic and functional composition of tropical forests in Ghana. Ecology Letters, 15, 1120-1129. SF, TRB, SLL, MDS, TRF and KCH designed the study; SF, TRF and EGF collected data; KA-B, SLL and MDS provided data; SF analysed data and wrote the paper. Chapter 3: In preparation. SF, TRB, SLL and TRF designed the study; SF and EGF collected data; KA-B, TRF and TROBIT consortium provided data; SF analysed data and wrote the paper. Chapter 4: In preparation. SF, TRB, SLL, TRF and KCH designed the study; SF, TRB and EGF collected data; KA-B, SLL and MDS provided data; SF analysed data and wrote the paper. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Assertion of moral rights: The right of Sophie Fauset to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2012 The University of Leeds and Sophie Fauset iii Acknowledgements First, many thanks to my principal supervisor, Tim Baker, for the considerable support, guidance, ideas and time given to me over the course of this project. I also thank my supervisors Simon Lewis, Ted Feldpausch, Keith Hamer and Michael Krom for all their contributions. This work could not have been carried out without the Forestry Commission of Ghana and the work put into the forest inventory network over the past decades from multiple field staff. Thank you to Kofi Affum-Baffoe for providing access to these resources, and the many forest guards, forest managers and local people for helping to locate the plots. Data from inventory plots were provided by the AFRITRON and TROBIT projects. Ernest Foli and the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana provided logistical support and guidance. I thank Jonathan Dabo for botanical assistance. Previous work on the ecology of Ghanaian tree species was essential to this thesis and I thank Michael Swaine and William Hawthorne for making this data available. Datasets on fire occurrence were provided by Rosa Maria Román Cuesta and France Gerard. Gabriela López-González provided assistance with the ForestPlots.net database, and Gloria Djabletey helped with exporting soil. I am very grateful for all the funding received: the Earth and Biosphere Institute provided my studentship, and the Royal Society, Sebright’s Educational Foundation and the Gilchrist Educational Trust funded the fieldwork. I thank the laboratory staff, Rachel Gasior, Martin Gilpin, David Ashley, John Corr and Miles Ratcliffe, for patient training in soil preparation and analytical methods, as well as caring out some of the soil analyses. I thank Oliver French for keeping me going. My family have always provided encouragement to me and even measured a few trees too! Thanks to the many iv colleagues who have become friends and provided both fun and help along the way, in particular, the support, singing and general mischief in the basement provided by Katie Aspray and Michelle Johnson. The following people also deserve a special mention: Lindsay Banin, Tim Jones, Ed Turner, Katherine Dunlavy, Keith Bloomfield, Nikée Groot, Rosie Goodman, Kate Staines, Yanan Jiang and Simon Willcock. The biggest thanks I have are for my amazing field team in Ghana. Kwaku Duah, Yaw Nkrumah and Justice Afedo Godwin were far more than I could have hoped for; hard working, supportive, loyal and kind. I have you to thank for the amazing experiences I have had and the work that was done, I think we made a great team. Finally, I wish to dedicate this thesis to Kwaku, a fantastic friend, logistics manager, tree measurer, football fan, dancer, plot finder, rat catcher, spar player, joker and forester. You are deeply missed. Kwaku Paul Duah v vi Abstract Understanding the impacts and synergies of the many threats facing tropical forests is a key research challenge. Here, three potential threats are addressed: drought, fire and lianas. Using a network of 31 plots, changes attributed to these threats are addressed over two decades in Ghanaian forests. Ghana experienced a multi-decade drought beginning in the early 1970s. The impact of this drought on functional composition and forest structure was tested. The results show clear shifts in functional composition. Despite this, biomass increased during the study period. This suggests that shifting species composition in favour of drought-tolerant species increases the resilience of tropical forests to long-term drought. A strong El Niño event in 1983 led to widespread wildfires in the Ghanaian forest zone. To test the long-term impacts of these fires the structure and composition of seven burnt plots and three control plots were compared. 27 years after initial fires, stem density and biomass were reduced in burnt plots, and composition was characteristic of disturbed forest. Over the twenty year study period, forest structure showed evidence of regeneration, but no recovery of floristic composition was observed. In contrast to the large increase in lianas observed in the Neotropics, there was only a very slight increase in the percentage of infested trees over the study period. Forest structure was found to be the main driver of liana spatial distribution. Importantly, large lianas showed different spatial patterns, as forest turnover was the strongest predictor of large liana distribution. Overall, fire was found to be the strongest threat, having a large and long-term impact on forest structure and composition. The results highlight that the prevention of fire occurrence should be a priority in tropical forest regions, as should the maintenance of biodiversity to maximise the resilience of forest to external changes. vii viii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. iv Abstract ................................................................................................................................ vii Table of Contents.................................................................................................................. ix List of Tables ....................................................................................................................... xiii List of Figures...................................................................................................................... xiv 1. Introduction........................................................................................................................1 1.1 Threats to tropical forests.......................................................................................1 1.2 Droughts..................................................................................................................5 1.2.1 Precipitation and water stress in tropical forest regions..........................5 1.2.2. Impacts of droughts on tropical forests....................................................7 1.3 Fires .......................................................................................................................12 1.3.1 Fire history of tropical forests .................................................................12 1.3.2 Current fire occurrence ...........................................................................12 1.3.3 Impacts of fires on tropical forests ..........................................................14 1.4 Lianas.....................................................................................................................18 1.4.1 Background...............................................................................................18 1.4.2 Impacts of lianas on host trees.................................................................19 1.4.3 Liana spatial distribution .........................................................................22 1.4.4 Recent increases in liana abundance.......................................................25 1.4.5 Drivers of increased liana abundance .....................................................27 1.5 Ghanaian forests....................................................................................................29 1.5.1 Climate and soils ......................................................................................29 1.5.2 31 Forest types........................................................................................................31 1.5.3 Fire and Drought History ........................................................................34 1.5.4 Plot network.............................................................................................35 1.6 Thesis aims and objectives....................................................................................38 1.6.1
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