Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is sold to the world as frozen romance and pure nature. But the real story today is at its feet, not its peak.
That’s because Kilimanjaro is a great real-world place for scientists to study how and why biodiversity is changing. The mountain has many different land uses, from forests to farms to towns, so researchers can see in real landscapes, not just in computer models or theories, how human activity affects nature in practice.
I’ve been researching east Africa and Kilimanjaro’s vegetation for 36 years. I joined scientists from Tokyo and Helsinki to look at historical maps of the mountain, 46 years of satellite imagery between 1976 and 2022, census data from 1913 onwards, and nearly 3,000 plant species recorded in 1,600 field plots across the mountain.
