{"id":86,"date":"2015-02-12T19:23:01","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T19:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mbgecologicalrestoration.wordpress.com\/?p=86"},"modified":"2015-02-12T19:23:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T19:23:01","slug":"a-tale-of-two-highlands-part-ii-ankafobe-madagascar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nher.blog\/index.php\/a-tale-of-two-highlands-part-ii-ankafobe-madagascar\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Highlands Part II: Ankafobe, Madagascar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Leighton Reid, James Aronson, and Chris Birkinshaw all contributed to this post on restoration in one of Missouri Botanical Garden\u2019s community-based conservation sites in Madagascar. They are currently travelling together discussing opportunities for ecological restoration in MBG\u2019s Madagascar Program and more generally for the country as a whole.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Madagascar\u2019s central highlands appear as a grassy sea \u2013 an undulating terrain with intermittent red gashes where heavy rain has dramatically eroded the landscape. Driving north along the national highway from the capital, Antananarivo, one sees Eucalpytus<\/em> trees growing near villages, as fuel and firewood plantations, but there is almost no natural forest. The few natural communities that remain represent vestiges of a former world.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The view across the road from Ankafobe – nearly unbroken grassland.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our destination today is one such vestige \u2013 the Ankafobe reserve<\/a>. Ankafobe is a tiny (33 hectare) strip of native forest growing near the headwaters of a highland stream.\u00a0Water-loving Pandanus<\/em>\u00a0trees\u00a0demarcate the stream bed and provide fruits for several lemur species. A Souimanga Sunbird (Cinnyris sovimanga<\/em>)<\/a> flitters from tree to tree. Just outside of the forest, highly flammable grassland stretches to every horizon.<\/p>\n

\"Pandanus<\/a>
Fragmented gallery forest at Ankafobe. Spikey Pandanus<\/em> demarcate the streambed. Red strips in the background are incipient forest restoration plots, where the soil has been turned over prior to planting nitrogen-fixing shrubs and native trees.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MBG staff and local villagers are working to restore forest on these bare hills, but it is not an easy task. Between clumps of grass is baked, orange laterite<\/a> \u2013 rock hard soil bereft of life and nutrients. Tree seedlings planted in it grow slowly, or not at all. To improve seedling growth, MBG scientists are testing several strategies. One method is to turn over the soil and seed hearty legumes, whose symbiotic bacteria replenish soil nitrogen \u2013 a key ingredient in DNA.<\/p>\n