Abstract
The northern Ethiopian landscape is dotted with small patches of church forests that are religious centers for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church (EOTC). These sacred groves are what remain of the once vast tropical Afromontane dry forest. Herein we review the landscape pattern of sacred groves in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, and their local scale nutrient status at two sites, Zahara and Debresena. A total of 1,488 sacred groves were inventoried within the study area, yielding an overall density of one sacred grove for every twenty square kilometers. Sacred groves averaged a little over five hectares and were separated from one another by more than two kilometers. At the local scale we found that soil carbon and nitrogen stocks have decreased significantly between the forest interior and the clearing indicating decreased soil fertility. Together our data indicate that these sacred groves are vulnerable to loss because of their small average size, isolation from seed sources, and decreasing soil status.
Highlights
Sacred groves, known as church forests, fetish forests and sacred forests, are found all over the world including Ethiopia, Japan, Morocco, India, and Ghana [1,2,3]
In the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia, centuries of deforestation likely driven by the need for fuel and agricultural and grazing land has resulted in radical alteration of the natural Ethiopian landscape [7] (Figure 1)
A total of 1,488 forests were mapped within the entire study area, yielding an overall density of one sacred grove for every twenty square kilometers
Summary
Known as church forests, fetish forests and sacred forests, are found all over the world including Ethiopia, Japan, Morocco, India, and Ghana [1,2,3]. Assessing forest degradation and land-use change over time is critical in conservation efforts to assess overall ecosystem status which can be done using basic landscape-scale inventory data (e.g., number of sacred groves, total area of forest) [16]. In highly fragmented landscapes similar to northern Ethiopia, the distance between forest patches and the number of patches per unit area are important determinates of both forest health and resilience Measures of isolation, such as the distance to each forest’s nearest neighbor has been established as useful information in regards to regeneration capacity [18,19]. Understanding forest status at both the regional and local scales allows us to develop a more complete view of the extent of forest degradation in the region
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