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Forest Landscape Evolution in Eritrea Throughout the Last Century—A Review

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Landscapes and Landforms of the Horn of Africa

Part of the book series: World Geomorphological Landscapes ((WGLC))

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Abstract

The purpose of this review is to present the changes in the forest landscape in Eritrea over a period of approximately 120 years. Data on Eritrean forest resources with their status, distribution and challenges were gathered and compiled after assessing all available published documents pertinent to forests in Eritrea. The review has identified that a number of earlier Italian botanists played a crucial role in identifying vegetation types of Eritrea and reporting its changes over time. Moreover, referring to the reviewed documents, the present work provides a synthesis of the principal phyto-geographical descriptions of Eritrean vegetation and the historical cumulative environmental drivers that contributed to the degradation of existing Eritrean forests. Very credible reviewed documents also depicted that Eritrean woodland cover has decreased significantly in the past century despite the efforts from the Eritrean government to cover the country, especially the highlands with dense forests. Generally, the output of this review can serve as a basis for further overall and in-depth floristic composition investigation of Eritrean forests. Readers are referred to original articles on Eritrean forests for detailed analytical methods and interpretation of results; all resources used for this review are also duly cited.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DAGRI Department, School of Agriculture, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Lorenzo Orioli

  2. Department of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management, College of Natural and Computational Science, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Ermias Lulekal Molla

Authors
  1. Lorenzo Orioli
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  2. Ermias Lulekal Molla
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Correspondence to Lorenzo Orioli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. International Platform for Dryland Research and Education, University of Tottori, Tottori, Japan

    Paolo Billi

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Orioli, L., Molla, E.L. (2022). Forest Landscape Evolution in Eritrea Throughout the Last Century—A Review. In: Billi, P. (eds) Landscapes and Landforms of the Horn of Africa. World Geomorphological Landscapes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05487-7_7

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