Southern Africa is dominated by fire-prone arid and semi-arid landscapes that are expected to experience increased maximum temperatures, rainfall variation and frequency of extreme rainfall events in the future. These conditions will affect fire and vegetation dynamics, but feedback and interactions among fire, rainfall and woody cover limit our ability to predict future ecosystem changes. Moreover, human activities can also drive changes in these components and their interactions. There are few long-term datasets available to monitor these changes over ecologically relevant time-scales. Here the combined analysis of a rainfall proxy, developed from a baobab tree core (Adansonia digitata) and fire proxy, from a sediment core, in the savanna-woodland transition zone in South Central Africa elucidates the history of two major drivers of savanna structure for the past 600 years. They show a system that oscillates between wooded and grassy vegetation states over time, as well as a change in the spatial scale of fires, which could be linked to human activities and recent fire management legislation.

南部非洲以火灾多发的干旱和半干旱景观为主，预计未来最高气温、降雨变化和极端降雨事件的频率将增加。这些条件将影响火灾和植被动态，但火灾、降雨和木质覆盖之间的反馈和相互作用限制了我们预测未来生态系统变化的能力。此外，人类活动也可以推动这些组件及其相互作用的变化。很少有长期数据集可用于在生态相关时间尺度上监测这些变化。这里是降雨代理的综合分析，从猴面包树核心（Adansonia digitata) 和火灾代理，来自中南部非洲稀树草原-林地过渡区的沉积岩芯，阐明了过去 600 年稀树草原结构的两个主要驱动因素的历史。他们展示了一个随着时间的推移在树木繁茂的植被状态和草丛植被状态之间振荡的系统，以及火灾空间规模的变化，这可能与人类活动和最近的火灾管理立法有关。