Cross-boundary human impacts compromise the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem

TY - JOUR

T1 - Cross-boundary human impacts compromise the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem

AU - Veldhuis, Michiel P.

AU - Ritchie, Mark E.

AU - Ogutu, Joseph O.

AU - Morrison, Thomas A.

AU - Beale, Colin Michael

AU - Estes, Anna B.

AU - Mwakilema, William

AU - Ojwang, Gordon O.

AU - Parr, Catherine L.

AU - Probert, James

AU - Wargute, Patrick W.

AU - Hopcraft, J. Grant C.

AU - Olff, Han

N1 - © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2019/3/29

Y1 - 2019/3/29

N2 - Protected areas provide major benefits for humans in the form of ecosystem services, but landscape degradation by human activity at their edges may compromise their ecological functioning. Using multiple lines of evidence from 40 years of research in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, we find that such edge degradation has effectively “squeezed” wildlife into the core protected area and has altered the ecosystem’s dynamics even within this 40,000-square-kilometer ecosystem. This spatial cascade reduced resilience in the core and was mediated by the movement of grazers, which reduced grass fuel and fires, weakened the capacity of soils to sequester nutrients and carbon, and decreased the responsiveness of primary production to rainfall. Similar effects in other protected ecosystems worldwide may require rethinking of natural resource management outside protected areas.

AB - Protected areas provide major benefits for humans in the form of ecosystem services, but landscape degradation by human activity at their edges may compromise their ecological functioning. Using multiple lines of evidence from 40 years of research in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, we find that such edge degradation has effectively “squeezed” wildlife into the core protected area and has altered the ecosystem’s dynamics even within this 40,000-square-kilometer ecosystem. This spatial cascade reduced resilience in the core and was mediated by the movement of grazers, which reduced grass fuel and fires, weakened the capacity of soils to sequester nutrients and carbon, and decreased the responsiveness of primary production to rainfall. Similar effects in other protected ecosystems worldwide may require rethinking of natural resource management outside protected areas.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85064137162&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1126/science.aav0564

DO - 10.1126/science.aav0564

M3 - Article

SN - 0036-8075

VL - 363

SP - 1424

EP - 1428

JO - Science

JF - Science

IS - 6434

ER -