A team of MBG scientists describes a recent experiment to grow native trees in a degraded part of Madagascar’s central highlands.
The dissected landscape of the Tampoketsa de Ankazobe in central Madagascar. Imagery: Google Earth (2018).
Seen from space, parts of Madagascar’s high plateau look like a wizened, grayish-pink brain drying in the sun. Thin, dark lines demarcate nooks and crannies – nearly the only places where bits of forest remain.
Formerly, the forests here covered more territory. Just how much territory is debated; ancient grasslands are also present in highland Madagascar. But in this area, about three hours northwest of the capital, many forests have been cleared, burned, and converted to new grassland within living memory.
To restore forests to their recent extent would benefit a range of species, including Schizolaena tampoketsana (a threatened, micro-endemic tree) and an undescribed species of fat-tailed dwarf lemur. However, restoration has been easier said than done so far. Natural forest regeneration is slow to non-existent, even near remnant forests where fire is excluded. Planted tree seedlings grow only millimeters each year, if they survive at all. Adding fertilizer seems to inhibit seedling growth. Inoculating seedlings with mycorrhizal fungi seems promising, but we are not yet sure if this will make a difference in the field.
Following a field trip in November 2016, we decided to test a couple of other tactics for growing native trees on this weathered plateau. First, we tested planting trees near existing forest. Being near the forest could help young seedlings by shading them from the hot sun or by sharing beneficial microorganisms. Second, we put shade structures over some of tree seedlings to test how much the bright, hot sunlight prevented tree growth.
We tested four tree species: Baronia taratana (Anacardiaceae), Nuxia capitata (Stilbaceae), Uapaca densifolia (Phyllanthaceae), and Eugenia pluricymosa (Myrtaceae).
An experiment with native tree seedlings at Ankafobe, a small forest fragment on the highlands northwest of Madgascar’s capital, Antananarivo. Photo: Chris Birkinshaw.
Three of the tree species survived and grew more when we planted them next to the forest. The fourth, Nuxia capitata, was a super species and grew relatively well wherever it was planted.
Two of the four species also survived more often beneath shade structures. But interestingly, this shade effect did not completely account for the effect of proximity to forest. That suggests that shade is important for protecting young seedlings from the hot sun, but something else is going on too. Perhaps trees growing next to the forest get a boost of water, since remnant forests sit at the valley bottom where water collects. If this is true, then tree seedlings might do well in any valley bottom, not just ones with remnant forest in them.
Our study site, called Ankafobe, is only a small area, so it would be a stretch to generalize our observations to the entire region. However, we are not the only ones to have done such a test in this ecosystem. In 2000, Ingar Pareliussen led a study with the same basic elements as ours at a site ten kilometers away, at Ambohitantely. Like us, Pareliussen’s team found that seedlings planted near the edge of a remnant forest grew better than those planted further away. In contrast, shade structures did not improve seedling survival. In fact, one species grew worse in the shade.
One vision for landscape-scale forest restoration on the Tampoketsa de Ankazobe. We used an edge-detection algorithm in Inkscape to highlight forest edges and valley bottoms, the places where trees grew best in our study. Imagery: Google Earth (2018).
Together, our two studies begin to suggest the outlines of a vision for landscape-scale forest restoration on the high Tampoketsa de Ankazobe. If native tree seedlings perform better along forest edges, it follows that a cost-effective strategy would be to focus on planting those areas first, leaving the higher, drier areas alone. Planting along edges would also be a conservative strategy given our hazy understanding of past landscapes. Some grasslands in highland Madagascar seem to be very old, and planting trees in such places could destroy habitat for grassland species, which are threatened in their own right.
For more information about this experiment, you can read our open access paper in Plant Diversity. We have also published several other blog posts about Ankafobe.
Natural History of Ecological Restoration 