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Tropical Savana!
by Paul Wittle

Contents!

1. Location

2. Plants

3. Climate

4. Animals

Location

• Found between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

• Covers large parts of Africa, South America and northern Australia. (Try to remember two examples as they often ask for examples in exams!)

Plants

• Natural vegetation = Grassland. There may be some trees and bushes.

• In some parts of the biome very few trees can be found but in wetter areas savanna woodland covers the land.

• The plant life is adapted to go weeks without water as drought is regular. The rivers and streams will run dry during weeks of drought.

• The grasses will die back in droughts and become dormant until the rains come again.

• The water table is often very low so the trees have long deep roots.

• Bushes such as acacia spread their roots over a very wide area to trap water which helps to explain why some areas have large gaps between trees.

The Climate

• Savanna are always hot and the annual variation is low. It can vary as much 10^oC (in Kano) which is more than tropical rainforest biome but far less than that of temperate biomes.

• There are distinctive wet and dry seasons (in Kano the rain fall between May and October, with no rain at all in the other 4 months of the year).

• The rain that does fall in the dry season is evapourated by the hot sun making the climate almost the same as that of the desert biome.

Animals

• The savanna supports thousands of grazing animals (herbivores) such as elephants, zebra, wildebeest, rhinos and giraffes. (again try to memorise some examples)

• Many different birds also live in the grasslands. Most feed on seeds or insects, but there some birds of prey such as eagles and vultures.

• The carnivores feed on the herbivores and the most common carinvores are lions, cheetahs and hyenas.

• Many of the animals survive the dry season by migrating to wetter areas and then returning when the rains return.

Well that's all for now, if you remember all that you should be able to answer a case study question!

If you have an exam soon then GOOD LUCK!

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