Fig. 3 Croplands of respective unions (Source: UNO office, 2015).
A total of 136 plots representing five different land uses (native forest: n = 39, forest plantations: n = 14, tea plantations: n = 24, croplands: n = 23 and pasture: n = 36) were sampled in three catchments with similar parental material in the Mau Forest region, Western Kenya.
This study covers Africa (Figure 1) with an area of approximately 30 million km2, including savannas (Savanna, 5.6 million km2), woody savannas (WSavanna, 3.9 million km2), open shrublands (OShrub, 3.7 million km2) evergreen broadleaf forest (EBF, 3.0 million km2), grassland (Grass, 2.2 million km2), croplands (Crop, 0.89 million km2), and closed shrublands (CShrub, 0.18 million km2).
Computational constraints linked to the software used for the Ecological Niche Factor Analysis (below), led us to merge these data into 5 different land cover types including: (1) dense evergreen forest, (2) deciduous woodland, (3) forest/savanna mosaic, (4) dry savanna and (5) croplands.
For the winter period as a whole, habitat categories were spread evenly among natural vegetation types (25.5%), water (29.4%), croplands (21.1%), and urban (24.0%) areas.
The sample size differed by LUCa: agroforestry: 25, forest: 181, cropland: 178, settlements: 63, grassland: 90.
The sample size differed by land use category: agroforestry: 25, forest: 181, cropland: 178, settlements: 63, grassland: 90.
In particular, further analysis of ongoing evolutionary change in cropland weeds is important because (1) most cropland weed species exhibit considerable adaptability, (2) cropland agriculture is continuously changing, and (3) further research on weed adaptability is needed to design cropping systems to address evolutionary change.
Tsai et al. (2010) and Jien et al. (2010) estimated SOC stocks of 63 forest soils (excluding Histosols and Spodosols) and 140 cropland soils in the upper 100 cm depth, indicating that converting forestlands to croplands can significantly result in SOC stocks loss.
The Soil Moisture Active Passive Validation Experiment (SMAPVEX-12) field campaign provided SWC and physical properties from 50 cropland fields to assess the influence of soil organic carbon (SOC) on SOC variability in a range of SOC, SWC and soil textural class over a 6 week period.
First, we performed spinup simulation of the model for deciduous broad leaf forest, C3 grassland and C4 cropland (only with ORCHIDEE-FM).
