Special collection in our journal enhances knowledge on African vegetation

The “African Vegetation Studies” collection in the Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) journal demonstrates that there are important classification studies ongoing in different parts of the continent to better understand the diversity and complexity of African vegetation.
The collection brings together seven articles from four African countries (pictured) and an editorial, authored by the collection’s editors: Reginald T. Guuroh, Leslie Brown, Miguel Alvarez, Manfred Finckh, Ute Schmiedel, Gaolathe Theboeng, and VCS’ Editor-in-Chief Jürgen Dengler. It begins with an overview of the current knowledge on vegetation types in Africa and the available databases, followed by summaries of the seven articles and ends with conclusions and future perspectives.
“The editorial highlights that there is a need to improve vegetation survey techniques, broaden the scope of sampling across the continent and improve collaboration among scientists to address data challenges if we are to achieve a better understanding of the extraordinary diversity of African vegetation and all its habitat types,” reads a review of the collection, published by the editors on the Vegetation Science blog.
“The editorial concludes that there is a potential to improve vegetation science studies in Africa, especially drawing on the lessons from other continents that have already made considerable progress.”
The collection also features the papers recognised with the annual Editor's Award at VCS in 2024 ("Potential distribution of major plant units under climate change scenarios along an aridity gradient in Namibia" by Naftal et al.) and 2023 ("A first syntaxonomic description of the vegetation of the Karstveld in Namibia" by Strohbach and Strohbach).
“In particular, European vegetation scientists have achieved significant progress in vegetation studies by leveraging on strong scientific collaborations, with common sampling/ methodological approaches albeit with relatively small amounts of money. This serves as a positive example for African scientists.”
In their editorial, the team also identifies the key challenges standing before African scientists. These include poor data availability, poor data access, language barriers, low budgetary allocations for science, and political stability in some parts of the continent.
The editors highlight that scientific publications from Africa tend to be underrepresented in scholarly literature in comparison with other regions, which results in inadequate amounts of knowledge and data on the continent.
The collection came along as a way to address this challenge. In 2021, the Africa Section of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS-AS) initiated discussions with Jürgen Dengler (one of the Editors-in-Chief at VCS). The resulting special collection targeted case studies of vegetation classifications across the African continent.
In conclusion, the team encourages vegetation scientists in Africa to adopt closer cross-country cooperation, build capacities in crucial aspects where expertise is inadequate and adopt standardized methodological approaches in vegetation sampling to ensure better coverage in data availability.
Additionally, they note, data needs to be collated at a central point and made available for use by the scientific community.
These are some of the main objectives of the Africa Section of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS-AS), which the team highly recommends to scientists from all parts of Africa. The association is open to everyone who is a vegetation science researcher originally from the African continent or carrying out vegetation research in Africa. Membership is open to all persons free of charge, while membership to IAVS is optional.
Read the full review by Reginald T. Guuroh, Leslie Brown, Miguel Alvarez, Manfred Finckh, Ute Schmiedel, Gaolathe Theboeng published on the Vegetation Science blog.
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