Shrinking summit. NASA’s Landsat satellite captured these images of Kilimanjaro February 17, 1993 and February 21, 2000. (Image: NASA/USGS)

AGGRESSIVE tree-felling on mount Kilimanjaro could be partly to blame for its vanishing ice cap.

The ice on Kilimanjaro’s summit has shrunk to just 15 per cent of its extent in 1912, leading campaigners to hold it up as a symbol of climate change. But other factors are also at play. For instance, the air at the summit is getting drier, reducing the snowfall that replenishes the ice and reflects solar radiation.

Now Nicholas Pepin from the University of Portsmouth, UK, …