The largest area of tropical grasslands occurs within Africa. The Sahelian region is a vast area nearly 600 km wide and 6000 km long situated south of the Sahara Desert.
Tropical grasslands have been defined as any ecosystem within the topics in which graminaceous species are a dominant feature of the vegetation. Tropical grassland occur where annual rainfall is higher and more predictably distributed throughout the year than that occurring in deserts, and typically occur between equatorial rain forests and hot deserts.
The tropical grasslands are subject to the influence of strong seasonality with respect to precipitation and at higher latitudes to temperature. The annual evaporation demand exceeds precipitation at most of the sites and occasional long spells of drought are characteristics.
One type of tropical grassland, called a savanna, contains widely scattered clumps of trees such as acacia, which are covered with thorns that keep some herbivores away. This biome usually has warm temperatures year-round and alternating dry and wet seasons.
Tropical grassland
