Managing the Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa - PROFOR

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INTRODUCTION
Miombo woodlands are the most extensive tropical seasonal woodland and dry forest formation
in Africa. The miombo region 1 covers somewhere around 2.4 million km². Above-ground biomass
stocking densities vary from 20 m³ per ha to as much as 150 m³. Miombo is generally found
in areas that receive more than 700 mm mean annual rainfall. Soils tend to be nutrient-poor
(Campbell et al. 1996; Frost 1996). Miombo woodlands cover substantial portions of southern
Africa: Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and most of the southern part
of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (fi gure 1.1). It is dominated by a few species, mostly
from the genera Brachystegia, Julbernardia, and Isoberlinia. Miombo is named after the Swahili
word for a Brachystegia species.
Miombo woodlands lack the
visual appeal of tropical moist
forests. They offer little for
commercial logging interests.
From an ecological perspective,
most miombo has been heavily
disturbed. There is very little ‘old
growth’ woodland remaining.
FIGURE 1.1: THE DISTRIBUTION OF MIOMBO WOODLAND
Why then should miombo be of
any interest at all
Biodiversity is signifi cant. Although
the richness and diversity
of faunal species is low, the
miombo region has an estimated
8,500 species of higher plants,
more than 54 percent of which
are endemic. Of these, 334 are
trees (compared with 171 in the
extensive and similar Sudanian
woodlands). Zambia has perhaps
the highest diversity of trees and
is the center of endemism for
Source: Based on White (1983).
Note: The mapped area is the botanical region in which miombo woodland
dominates. It is now largely a mixture of miombo woodland, degraded miombo
woodland, and smallholder cropland. Miombo and other forest types are not
distinguished in the data.
1 White (1983) puts the fi gure for the “Zambezian phytochorollogical region” (of which miombo is the dominant
element) at 3.8 million km 2 . Millington et al. (1994), based on remote sensing, suggested the more generally cited
2.7 million km 2 , but it is not exactly clear what they include in their estimate. Frost et al. (2003) suggest 2.4 million
km 2 for the miombo region, of which 466,000 km 2 has been transformed. The miombo region is a mixture of
woodland, degraded woodland, and cropland.
POLICIES, INCENTIVES, AND OPTIONS FOR THE RURAL POOR
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