African vegetation develops in direct response to the interacting effects of rainfall, temperature, topography, and type of soil; it is further modified by the incidence of fire, human agriculture, and grazing and browsing by livestock.
In the colder areas of these climatic zones, a natural tall-grass vegetation develops on soil profiles whose surface layers can be as much as two metres (about six feet) thick, with up to 16 percent humus by mass.
Dryland vegetation developed morphological and physiological strategies to cope with drought.
During self-restoration without direct human impact, the vegetation developed towards a steppe with dominance of Artemisia lercheana/pauciflora and Stipa pennata.
The landscape was composed of a mosaic of open bush and forest areas, in which wet and grassy vegetation developed on riverbanks.
If cultivated areas in flatlands and pasture fields on slopes are not continuously maintained by farmers, thorny vegetation develops within one to 3 years.
As this vegetation developed, soil surface condition, as indicated by a nutrient cycling index, also progressed towards values found on nearby natural savannas.
After deglaciation the early Holocene vegetation developed from an open pioneer herb-dominated vegetation into dwarf-shrub heath with shrubs, which was soon colonised by Betula and later also by Pinus sylvestris at the two lower sites.
A recent chronosequential study on the succession of vegetation, profile morphology, and soil properties of post-agrogenic sandy soils under self-restoration of the southern taiga zone in the European part of Russia showed that the vegetation developed towards spruce forest and the soils towards natural Podzols with an accumulation of thick raw humus layers [4].
A spatial statistical model determining the possible tsunami impact mitigation by coastal vegetation developed after the December 2004 earthquake event for Aceh, Indonesia, was adapted and tested under the conditions of the Seychelles in the western Indian Ocean to find out whether comparable protective effects of vegetation existed.
