Original Research

Vegetation-environment relationships in a catchment containing a dambo in central Zimbabwe

I. Mapaure, M. P. McCartney
Bothalia | Vol 31, No 1 | a511 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/abc.v31i1.511 | © 2001 I. Mapaure, M. P. McCartney | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 17 September 2001 | Published: 17 September 2001

About the author(s)

I. Mapaure, Tropical Resource Ecology Programme. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe
M. P. McCartney, Institute of Hydrology, United Kingdom

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Abstract

Seasonally saturated wetlands, known as dambos. are a common landscape element throughout much of southern  Africa. The diversity of species composition within catchments containing dambos is widely attributed to hydrological conditions, but plant-water relationships are poorly established. In this paper a detailed classification and a vegetation map are presented for a small catchment in central Zimbabwe containing a dambo. Canonical Correspondence Analysis has been applied to explore the link between vegetation composition and environmental variables. This confirms that water is a key influence in species distribution and small-scale patterning of vegetation within the catchment.


Keywords

Canonical Correspondence Analysis; dambo. plant-water relations; vegetation classification. Zimbabwe

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1. Vegetation structure and effects of human use of the dambos ecosystem in northern Mozambique
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