Five members of the Woody Weeds team participated in the Summer Institute 2018 at the offices of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Centre (SESYNC) in Annapolis, USA. The five joined six other teams for a week of training on the of statistical software for improved interdisciplinary collaboration.

During the week, the team worked on a small project involving data collected in the Woody Weeds project, with the aim to estimate how soil carbon stocks have changed over the course of the Prosopis invasion in Baringo county, Kenya, and how control of the invader and restoration of grassland may affect soil organic carbon stocks in the future.

Thanks, SESYNC for the great experience!

The paper by Ketema Bekele about Economic Impacts of Prosopis Spp. Invasions on Dryland Ecosystem Services in Ethiopia and Kenya is now online.

The paper is available for free until 24 October 2018

The paper is based on household interviews in Baringo county, Kenya, and Afar region in Ethiopia. The key messages are:

• Prosopis spp. have both positive and negative effects on drylands ecosystem services of East Africa;
• At current invasion level, the negative impacts of Prosopis Spp. outweigh the benefits;
• In Ethiopia, communities were willing to contribute USD50.42 annually for Prosopis management options that will improve biodiversity, water availability, seasonal mobility and tourism flow;
• In Kenya, communities were willing to contribute USD37.74 per year for Prosopis management options that will improve biodiversity and water availability

During the first workshop of the Local Implementation Group in Amani, Tanzania, fifteen stakeholders with a diverse background, from farmers, via village executives to conservationists, discussed invasive alien species management in the area. Two scientists of the Woody Weeds project are also participating as stakeholders. Through a structured learning process, the stakeholders identified and ranked alien invasive species of concern according to their perceived impacts, as well as five known management methods that are being used against the species.

The members of the group recognised the usefulness of the structured learning method involving local stakeholders and acknowledged the importance of mutual learning. The participants mentioned that this was the first workshop involving very different stakeholders and named previous projects that have failed because of insufficient local stakeholder involvement. The workshop also helped communication between farmers and extension officers.

A short report describing the first workshop and the lessons learnt can be found here.

Further workshops are planned later this year where the members of the group will document the identified management methods and jointly decide on aims of the IAS management in the area. They will also decide the management methods that will be implemented as part of a trial.

Prosopis invasions in East Africa offer a unique opportunity to investigate whether some Prosopis species or genotypes are more likely to expand their range following their introduction than others, because different Prosopis species were introduced about 40 years ago and the founder trees from which the invasive populations were generated, are still present.

To address this question, PhD student Maria Loreto is conducting a reciprocal transplant experiment in July 2016, using seeds from the first individuals of Prosopis species planted in Kenya as well as seeds from trees growing at the invasion front.

One and a half years after the seedlings were planted, only P. juliflora trees from the invasive population reached reproductive maturity. Interestingly, in their native range, the Americas, mesquite trees mature only after 3 years. She also found that under experimental conditions seeds from invasive P. juliflora had a higher germination rate than seeds from the founder populations. Earlier flowering and seed production increase the reproductive output and higher seed germination favours seedling establishment. Hence, these first results indicate that trees from the invasive population have better ability to spread and invade new areas than the originally planted genotypes.

With some 35 partners and 30 stakeholders attending, the fifth meeting of the Woody Weeds project, which was held from 22 to 29 January 2018 in Moshi, at the foot of Kilimanjaro Mountain, was the largest since the project started in 2015. It was a milestone event as it brought together the PhD and MSc students from the first project phase with those of the second one. A substantial part of the meeting was dedicated to knowledge transfer between the student cohorts.

One session included highly interesting presentations from external experts working on a variety of topics relevant to the Woody Weeds project, such as the revision of the Tanzanian Forest Policy (Prof A.B. Temu, Capacity Development Resources; Forestry, Agroforestry and Environment), land tenure security and sustainable land management (Dr Michael Odhiambo, Reconcile), challenges to livestock management in Tanzania (Dr Angello Mwilawa, Tanzanian Livestock Research Institute), livelihood opportunities from fast growing exotic and native tree species (Dr Alice Muchugi, ICRAF), and the national assessment of invasive species management in South Africa (Prof Brian van Wilgen, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa). The meeting also included a field trip to villages nearby Moshi, during which a traditional court hearing was organized with local stakeholders to discuss perceptions and questions regarding the recent invasion of Prosopis juliflora in the Kilimanjaro region.

The stimulating workshop in Moshi has helped the whole project team to pave the way towards the identification of promising invasive species management options in a joint process with stakeholders, and to select some for test implementation.

As Woody Weeds enters into its second phase, a new cohort of four PhD students has joined the project. In January, they all attended the Woody Weeds project meeting in Moshi, Tanzania, where – for the first time – they presented their research plans to the other project partners. In line with the second phase’s main objectives, the students will investigate sustainable land management (SLM) options for mitigating the negative impacts of woody invasive species.

Beatrice Adoyo (Kenya) will focus on SLM technologies and approaches, as well as institutional barriers towards Prosopis management in Baringo County. Boniphace Nkombe (Tanzania) will evaluate the same but with a focus on Lantana Camara in the East Usambara Mountains. Mickfanaka Mwihomeke, also from Tanzania but based in Nairobi, will assess the effects of invasive plan control measures on biodiversity, ecosystem services and rural livelihoods. Finally, Urs Baumgartner (Switzerland) will attempt establishing overall principles of SLM strategies for the mitigation of the negative effect of woody invasive species in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.

The project management and the entire project team welcomes the new PhD students and wishes them a good start in their exciting new scientific venture!

Prof. Brian van Wilgen of the Centre for Invasion Biology at Stellenbosch University has funding available for a bursary to support and MSc project about the effects of Prosopis management in the Northern Cape. Applicants should have a BSc (Honours) degree in an appropriate discipline (e.g. geography, geo-informatics, environmental studies, botany, or forestry), preferably with experience in remote sensing/GIS. A strong interest in remote sensing-based time-series analysis, GIS, and R/javascript programming is required for this thesis.

You can download the advert by clicking the link. The position will be filled in the coming month or two.

Posted on 16 February 2018.

In a new video on the Woody Weeds website, PhD student Amina Hamad from Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania talks about her research on Lantana camara and how working with PhD students from different scientific disciplines in other countries helps her tackle complex socio-environmental problems caused by this invasive plant species. She also explains that working in an interdisciplinary project prepares her for her future career.

For the second phase of the Woody Weeds project we are looking to fill four additional PhD positions, in Kenya, Tanzania and Switzerland. A great opportunity to work in a highly international and interdisciplinary project that addresses a complex problem with the help of affected communities.

Below you can downoald copies of the job descriptions and other details. The successful applicants are expected to start before the end of 2017.

Implementing Sustainable Land Management (SLM) strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of woody invasive alien species in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania (Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania)

Implementing Sustainable Land Management (SLM) strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of woody invasive alien species in Baringo County (CETRAD, Nanyuki, Kenya)

Principles of SLM for the mitigation of the negative effects of woody IAS (CDE, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Woody invasive alien species in East Africa: assessing the benefits of management on biodiversity and rural livelihoods (CABI, Nairobi, Kenya)

In a new video, people from Afar, Ethiopia, talk about the impacts of Prosopis on their livelihoods and Woody Weeds team members talk about what the project aims to do in Afar.