Editors’ Award 2024 goes to a study predicting how Namibian vegetation will change by 2080

For a fourth consecutive time, the Chief editors at the Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) journal awarded one of the publications in the last completed journal annual volume for its outstanding scientific value. In line with the tradition at VCS, the awarded contribution is one of the four papers selected as Editors’ Choice in the quarterly contest at the journal.
The 2024 Editors’ Award goes to the team of Leena Naftal and their paper, titled “Potential distribution of major plant units under climate change scenarios along an aridity gradient in Namibia”. Published in mid-June, the paper was recognised as the Editors’ Choice paper of the second quarter of 2024.
In their study, the team did not only develop a numerical high-level classification of the (near) natural vegetation along a 1,400 km long and 30 km wide transect in Namibia based on nearly 2,000 plots of 1,000 m2, but they also used the current distribution of the zonal vegetation types they identified to predict the future dynamics under different global change scenarios.
As a result, the scientists concluded that likely by 2080 the Combretum collinum-Terminalia seriacea broad-leaved savannas will have expanded a lot, while several other zonal vegetation types will have gone extinct due to CO2 emissions.
“We selected this paper as it demonstrates in an exemplary manner how modern vegetation classification based on a large and consistent dataset can make a substantial contribution to global change research,” the Chief editors explain their choice.
Making the contribution even more impressive, according to the Chief editors, is the fact that the present work was Naftal’s Master thesis in Natural Resource Management at the Namibian University of Science & Technology, which was in turn part of a large biodiversity monitoring project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
These days, Naftal works on her PhD on carbon stocks in the Kalahari and Mopane woodlands of Namibia and Angola under the supervision of Vera De Cauwer (Namibian University of Science & Technology) and Kyle Dexter (University of Edinburgh, Scotland).
Curiously, the contribution by Naftal and her colleagues at the Namibia University of Science and Technology is the second paper published in the 'African vegetation studies' special article collection to be awarded with the annual recognition. Last year, the 2023 Editors’ Award went to the team of Ben J. Strohbach and Marianne M. Strohbach for another study on Namibian vegetation. Their study presented the very first syntaxonomic description of the vegetation of the Karstveld in Namibia: an area recognised for its high plant diversity, but also regarded as “a hotspot of various forms of degradation, including bush encroachment”.
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List of the 2024 Editors’ Choice Papers by quarter:
- “Modeling the potential distribution of floristic assemblages of high Andean wetlands dominated by Juncaceae and Cyperaceae in the Argentine Puna” by Michal Hájek et al. (see more);
- “Potential distribution of major plant units under climate change scenarios along an aridity gradient in Namibia” by Leena Naftal et al. (see more);
- “A coupled cartographic approach between bioclimatology and vegetation formations of Mexico” by Fernando Gopar-Merino et al. (see more);
- “Plant communities of high-Andean bofedal wetlands across a trans-Andean transect in southern Peru” by Mónica Maldonado-Fonkén et al. (see more).
Image caption (top): Field work in a Calicorema capitata–Rhigozum trichotomum dwarf shrub savanna in Namibia. Photo credit: Leena Naftal.
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