Data from: Land use legacy effects on woody vegetation in agricultural landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia

Aim: Past land use legacy effects – extinction debts and immigration
credits – might be particularly pronounced in regions characterized by
complex and dynamic landscape change. The aim of this study was to
evaluate how current woody plant species distribution, composition and
richness related to historical and present land uses. Location: A
smallholder farming landscape in southwestern Ethiopia. Methods: We
surveyed woody plants in 72 randomly selected 1 ha sites in farmland, and
grouped them into forest specialist, generalist and pioneer species.
First, we investigated woody plant composition and distribution using
non-metric multidimensional scaling. Second, we modelled species richness
in response to historical and current distance from the forest edge.
Third, we examined diameter class distributions of trees in recently
converted versus permanent farmland. Results: Historical distance was a
primary driver of woody plant composition and distribution. Generalist and
pioneer species richness increased with historical distance. Forest
specialists, however, did not respond to historical distance. Only few old
individuals of forest specialist species remained in both recently
converted and permanent farmlands. Main conclusions: Our findings suggest
that any possible extinction debt for forest specialist species in
farmland at the landscape scale was rapidly paid off, possibly because
farmers cleared large remnant trees. In contrast, we found substantial
evidence of immigration credits in farmland for generalist and pioneer
species. This suggests that long-established farmland may have
unrecognised conservation values, though apparently not for forest
specialist species. We suggest that conservation policies in southwestern
Ethiopia should recognize not only forests, but also the complementary
value of the agricultural mosaic – similarly to the case of European
cultural landscapes. A possible future priority could be to better
reintegrate forest species in the farmland mosaic.

Data for land use legacy
effects on woody vegetationThree zip-archived,
comma delimited csv files with (1) DBH data, (2) species richness data,
and (3) species composition data. For (1), columns include site ID, short
name of tree species (composed of first three letters of genus name and
first three letters of tree species name), tree DBH (in cm), land use
history (i.e. permanent or converted farmland), and tree species type
(i.e. forest specialist, generalist, or pioneer species). For (2), columns
include kebele ID (GBD = Borcho Deka, GKH = Kela Harari, SDM = Difo Mani,
SGB = Gido Bere, TBW = Bere Weranigo, and TKF = Kuda Kofi), site ID, land
use type, total species richness, total species abundance, forest
specialist species richness, forest specialist species abundance, pioneer
species richness, pioneer species abundance, generalist species richness,
generalist species abundance, proportion of vegetation cover within the
site (in %), wetness index, historical (1973) distance (in m), current
(2015) distance (in m), land use history (permanent or converted
farmland), and altitude (in m above sea level). (3) is a site-by-species
abundance matrix with site IDs and species represented by their short name
(composed of first three letters of genus name and first three letters of
species name).