T4.1 Trophic savannas

T4. Savannas and grasslands biome

T4

Profile summary

Full profile at https://global-ecosystems.org/explore/groups/T4.1

Brief description

An unparalleled abundance and diversity of large herbivores maintain an open structure of these tree-grass ecosystems in the seasonal tropics of Africa and south Asia. Large herbivores are pivotal in maintaining short rhizomatous and tussock grasses, limiting recruitment of trees, cycling nutrients, sustaining complex food webs of invertebrate detritivores and diverse assemblages of mammalian and avian predators and scavengers. Seasonally high productivity coincides with the summer rainy season. Fires occur in some years, but are less influential than herbivores on ecosystem function. Trees and grasses have adaptations to seasonal drought and heavy browsing, such as rhizomes and stolons that allow grasses to spread under grazing pressure.

Key features

Grassy woodlands and grasslands dominated by C4 grasses in seasonal climates with lower rainfall and higher soil fertility..

Overview of distribution

African and Asian wet/dry tropics & subtropics.

Map description

Major and minor occurrences were initially identified using consensus land-cover maps (Tuanmu et al. 2014) and then cropped to selected terrestrial ecoregions (Dinerstein et al. 2017) at 30 arc seconds spatial resolution. Ecoregions were selected if: i) their descriptions mentioned features consistent with those identified in the profile of the Ecosystem Functional Group; and ii) if their location was consistent with the ecological drivers described in the profile..

Map code and version: T4.1.web.mix v1.0. DOI

Version history

Profile versions

  • v2.1 (2022-04-06): CER Lehmann; DA Keith.1
  • v2.01 (NA): NA.
  • v2.0 (2020-05-31): CER Lehmann; DA Keith.
  • v1.0 (2020-01-20): CER Lehmann; DA Keith.

Available maps

Read more details about the current map versions here.

  • Web navigation (code: T4.1.web.mix, version v1.0)
  • Indicative Map (code: T4.1.IM.mix, version v1.0)

Read more details about older or alternative versions of maps for this functional group.

  • Web navigation: requires review (code: T4.1.web.orig, version v1.0)
  • Indicative Map: discarded (code: T4.1.IM.orig, version v1.0)

References

Main references

References used in the different versions of the profiles.

  • Archibald S, Hempson GP (2016) Competing consumers: contrasting the patterns and impacts of fire and mammalian herbivory in Africa Phil Trans R Soc B 371: 20150309
  • Hempson GP, Archibald S, Bond WJ, Ellis RP, Grant CC, Kruger FJ, et al. (2015) Ecology of grazing lawns in Africa Biological Reviews 90: 979–994

Map references

References used in the different versions of the maps (current and discarded).

  • Dinerstein E, Olson D, Joshi A, Vynne C, Burgess ND, Wikramanayake E, Hahn N, Palminteri S, Hedao P, Noss R, Hansen M, Locke H, Ellis EE, Jones B, Barber CV, Hayes R, Kormos C, Martin V, Crist E, Sechrest W, Price L, Baillie JEM, Weeden D, Suckling K, Davis C, Sizer N, Moore R, Thau D, Birch T, Potapov P, Turubanova S, Tyukavina A, de Souza N, Pintea L, Brito JC, Llewellyn Barnekow Lillesø JP, van Breugel P, Graudal L, Voge M, Al-Shammari KF, Saleem M (2017) An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm, BioScience 67: 534–545. DOI:10.1093/biosci/bix014. Data-set available on-line
  • Tuanmu, M.-N. and W. Jetz (2014) A global 1-km consensus land-cover product for biodiversity and ecosystem modeling Global Ecology and Biogeography 23(9):1031–1045 DOI:10.1111/geb.12182

Footnotes

  1. This is the current version available at official site.↩︎