Climate-fire interactions and Savanna ecosystems : A dynamic vegetation modeling study for the African Continent
Savannas are inherently “disturbed” ecosystems, but the regularly recurring disruptions play such a fundamental ecological role (Scholes and Archer, 1997) that “episodic events” rather than “disturbance” may the more apt terminology. From an atmospheric perspective, fire is the most significant of these episodic events. Fires shape community species composition; tree to grass ratio and nutrient re