**4.2 Impacts of soil degradation on vegetation structure**

Vegetation cover was used in the study as a measure of vegetation structure. With respect to vegetation cover data, the results showed that only moderately and highly degraded soil vegetation cover data were significantly similar (p > 0.05). Vegetation cover data provide information on vegetation type and may be used in gradients studies to investigate the effects of environmental factors on plant abundance [46, 47]. These results could be explained by the vegetation type found on each soil degradation class. Shrub savannas were the vegetation type found both on moderately and highly degraded soils. The types of vegetation observed on slightly and extremely degraded soils are tree/shrub savannas and herbaceous savannas respectively. The results of the impacts of soil degradation on vegetation structure namely vegetation type demonstrated the abundance of phanerophytes on slightly degraded soils, a decrease of the abundance of phanerophytes to the profit of therophytes on intermediate degradation classes and an abundance of therophytes on extremely degraded soils.
