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Southern African Savannas

  • Conference paper
Ecology of Tropical Savannas

Part of the book series: Ecological Studies ((ECOLSTUD,volume 42))

Abstract

In recent years the term “savanna” has become synonymous with African plainslands - grasslands studded with flat-crowned acacias and carrying a profusion of wild ungulates. In this chapter the term will be used in a wider context, to include all ecosystems in which C4 grasses potentially dominate the herbaceous stratum and where woody plants, usually fire-tolerant, vary in density from widely scattered individuals to a closed woodland broken now and again by drainage-line grasslands. Rainfall occurs in the warmer, summer months with a dry period of between two to eight months duration during which fire is a typical phenomenon at intervals varying from one to fifty years.

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    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

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  • Wild, H., 1968. Phytogeography in South Central Africa. Kirkia 6, 197–22.

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Authors
  1. B. J. Huntley
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CSIR, Cooperative Scientific Programmes, P.O. Box 395, 0001, Pretoria, South Africa

    Brian J. Huntley

  2. Department of Botany and Microbiology, University of the Witwatersrand, P.O. Box 1176, 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Brian H. Walker

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© 1982 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg

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Huntley, B.J. (1982). Southern African Savannas. In: Huntley, B.J., Walker, B.H. (eds) Ecology of Tropical Savannas. Ecological Studies, vol 42. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68786-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68786-0_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-68788-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-68786-0

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