African rainforests more resilient to climate change

Tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other regions, a gathering of scientists has said.
 
An international conference agreed that the region’s surviving tree species had endured a number of climatic catastrophes over the past 4,000 years.
 
As a result, they are better suited to cope with future shifts in the climate.
 
The event at the University of Oxford looked at the "fate of Africa’s tropical forests in the 21st Century".
 
Conference organiser Yadvinder Malhi, professor of ecosystems at the university, said the main reason was that Africa’s climate had been far more variable than, say, the Amazon or South-East Asia, even over the past 10,000 years.
 
"In some senses, African forests have gone through a number of catastrophes in the past 4,000 to 2,000 years," he told BBC News