Renaat Van Rompaey

European Union | EU

Global conservation assessments require information on the distribution of biodiversity across the planet. Yet this information is often mapped at a very coarse spatial resolution relative to the scale of most land-use and management decisions. Furthermore, such mapping tends to focus selectively on better-known elements of biodiversity (e.g., vert...

La couverture forestière du Parc National de Taï est considérée comme l’un des derniers vestiges intacts des forêts denses humides de la Côte d’Ivoire. Elle est également selon certains auteurs l’un des derniers restes des forêts denses primaires qui peuplaient le Sud-Ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire lors des dernières grandes glaciations. Selon plusieurs...

Inside Liberia, the lowland area is the most complete refugium for large Caesalpinioid tree species. The Nimba region constituted a partial refugium. A hypothesized partial refugium was also confirmed in southwest Ghana. Semi-deciduous forest was present outside these evergreen rain forest refugia. A map using only two classes (forest and non-fores...

Results of silvicultural experiments in Surinam, carried out since 1965, have shown that volume increment of marketable timber species can be effectively stimulated by treatments such as liberation and refinement. Such refinement might, for example, initially reduce the basal area of non-marketable species from ca. 20 to 6 m2/ha and the total basal...

A key problem for conservation is the coincidence of regions of high biodiversity with regions of high human impact. Twenty-five of the most threatened centers of plant diversity were identified by Myers et al., and these “hotspots” play a crucial role in international conservation strategies. The primary goal of the hotspots is to cover the most t...

Plant species diversity is surveyed in the southern part of the Taï National Park (TNP), Côte d’Ivoire. This park is the largest remaining tract of pristine forest in the West African rainforest biodiversity hotspot. Plant assemblages and environment factors were surveyed in 39 temporary 625-m2 plots within three areas. The species list was complet...

Which areas need most urgently conservation effort? How can we make a worldwide priority list of biodiversity hotspots the most threatened? How much detail do we need in plant distribution data, e.g. for Africa, to answer these questions reliably? Conservation gap analysis is in fashion in America since a couple of decades. Using geographic informa...

Sous les tropiques, les chaines de montagne sont souvent des lieux de concentration d'especes endemiques a cause du eli mat plus hum ide et de Ia diversite en ·habitats plus grande qu'en plaine. Comptes par degre carre, les carres avec montagnes sont toujours les carres les plus denses en especes (p. e. mont Cameroun, Monte Allen (Guinee Equatorial...

A key problem for conservation is the coincidence of regions of high biodiversity with regions of high human impact. Twenty-five of the most threatened centers of plant diversity were identified by Myers et al., and these “hotspots” play a crucial role in international conservation strategies. The primary goal of the hotspots is to cover the most t...

Cette étude de terrain "Impact de la sécheresse de l'été 2003 sur le Haut Languedoc" s'insère dans la Formation Foresterie Rurale et Tropicale de l'École Nationale du Génie Rural des Eaux et des Forêts (ENGREF) de Montpellier. Elle s'organise autour d'une réflexion sur l'identification des effets de la sécheresse sur les produits agricoles, l'éleva...

Allanblackia trees have the largest fruits of all plants in the African rain forest. The seeds are known to contain edible fat, but have only scarcely been used on a commercial scale, e.g. in Tanzania. In most parts of Africa, the use of Allanblackia has been decreased over the last 50 years to the favour of other, mostly liquid oils. Nevertheless,...

The Tropenbos Cote d'Ivoire Programme provides scientific support to the Autonomous Project for the Conservation of Ta"i National Park (PACPNT). Within this framework, three sectors in the South of the Park, south of Hana River near Guiroutou, Dogbo and Djapadji, were botanically surveyed between March 1998 and January 1999. On 39 sample plots of 3...

In the southern part of Taï National Park, 899 plant species have been inventoried. Those species combined with those of Aké Assi and Pfeffer (1975) allowed to complete the list of Taï species to 1200 species. In those species, 73 are important in conservation of forest. Those very rare, rare, endemic and "sassandriennes" species are not distribute...

The Tropenbos Côte d'Ivoire Programme provides scientific support to the Autonomous Project for the Conservation of Taï National Park (PACPNT). Within this framework, three sectors in the South of the Park, south of Hana River near Guiroutou, Dogbo and Djapadji, were botanically surveyed between March 1998 and January 1999. On 39 sample plots of 35...

The AETFAT-Unesco vegetation map of Africa (White 1983) depicts the forest gradient within the Upper Guinea subcentre of the Guineo-Congolian 'rainforest' centre of endemism in a very concise way: 2 types and their mosaic on the map, and 4 types in the memoir. To map with more detail national vegetation maps exists but there is no straightforward t...

In the beginning of 1999 Conservation Intl (CI) had contacted Breteler and Parren with a questionnaire about their expertise on West Africa. As Breteler did not intend to attend the workshop, I supplied a form with my own expertise as well as the terms of reference of the ECOSYN project, to some extent similar to the Upper Guinea project of CI.  D...

The occurrence and abundance of 12 canopy tree species from the moist tropical forests of West Africa have been studied in relation to a climatic gradient. We focused on environmental factors related to water availability: annual amount of rainfall, the length of the dry season, and cumulative water deficit. Species occurrence and abundance data ar...

Forest productivity figures form the basis of forest management planning, in the tropics as well as in temperate zone countries. Ideally, annual country-wide harvest and damage should equal annual increment of standing volume, with constant forested area. In reality, harvest often exceeds increment, and both standing volume and forest area decrease...

Population structures were drawn for selected West African rain forest canopy tree species to evaluate whether regeneration was present. Regional variability was studied for five sites near the border between Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire.Population structures were highly variable. Three major types of population structures are recognised: a decrease i...

Part I Climate Change

Le changement graduel de la composition des forêts de la côte pluvieuse vers l'intérieur du pays a été décrit par plusieurs auteurs en Côte d'Ivoire, au Ghana et au Libéria. Les critères différentiels habituels étaient les taxons arborescents de grande taille. Depuis quelques années ces typologies sont aussi fondées sur des relevés traités numériqu...

Rainfall series (1920–1990) from 11 stations from Côte d'Ivoire and 19 stations from Liberia have been analysed for pseudo-cyclic trends. Standardized deviations from the station's mean through time were plotted separately for the Ivorian stations where extensive deforestation occurred and the Liberian stations where deforestation was less extensiv...

A comparison is made between acidification and the climate change problems. The common cause and the variety of effects with an impact on many different ecosystems and aspects of society are discussed. A number of specific aspects of environmental pollution research are highlighted. For the Dutch Climate Change Program 1995–2000, a more system-orie...

This chapter presents a short discussion on the National Research Programme (NRP I) assessment report“Impact of Climate Change on the Wadden Sea.” After the presentation by W. Wolff (IBN-DLO), coordinator of the Wadden project cluster, a short discussion took place. W. Roeleveld (Free University Amsterdam) commented that the geological sedimentatio...

Climate change is more and more considered to be a major global environmental risk. The above mentioned conference was the concluding part of a new programme organized in The Netherlands with a view to stimulating participation of Dutch scientists in the international research effort concerning the problem of climate change. The proceedings of the...

The spatial distribution of canopy gaps was analysed on three sites (total 71 ha) in the tropical moist forest of Tal National Park, Ivory Coast. Pattern analysis revealed a clustered distribution of gaps for two of the three sites. Catena dependent gap formation processes might explain local differences in the occurrence and distribution of gaps....

Regional variation in the characteristics of gaps larger than 10 m2 was determined for three forest sites on different soils, along a climatic and vegetation gradient in the tropical moist forest of Tat National Park, Ivory Coast. The total inventoried area was 71 ha. The three sites were strikingly similar with regard to gap density, gap size dist...

Summary also in Dutch and French. Thesis (doctoral)--Wageningen Agricultural University, 1993. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 134-142).

Taï National Park is one of the last remaining untouched forest areas of West Africa (ca. 500.000 ha). Since 1977 MAB UNESCO and ORSTOM research projects have been conducted both inside and outside the Park, with participation of Wageningen Agricultural University. In 1986 Wageningen University started an interdisciplinary project to study land use...