Major Grassland Habitat Types - Asian Daurian Steppe
| Analytical Overview |
| Ecoregions are defined as "a relatively large unit of land or water containing a characteristic set of natural communities that share a large majority of their species, dynamics, and environmental conditions" (Dinerstein et al. 1995: 4). Ecoregions, when aggregated, form Major Habitat Types (MHTs) and represent the approximate original extent of natural communities (Olson and Dinerstein 1997: 4). Thus, the grassland ecoregional boundaries shown on these series of maps indicate areas that potentially were covered by grassland, given the appropriate climatic and ecological conditions and no human intervention. The IGBP land cover classification represents change in these previously grassland areas. |
Map Projection
Interrupted Goode's Homolosine
Map Description
This map is part of a series of five, showing ecoregion boundaries of predominantly grassland areas before major modification by humans. The ecoregion boundaries have been superimposed on the global land cover map produced by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). Each of the five ecoregions show varying percents of habitat change - primarily from grassland to cropland but also from grassland to urban areas. The Tallgrass Prairie ecoregion of North America, by far, shows the largest change: retaining only 9 percent grassland area with 71 percent cropland and 19 percent urban area. The Cerrado Woodland and Savanna ecoregion of South America follows with a similar amount of land as cropland (71 percent), 21 percent grassland, and 5 percent urban. The last three ecoregions - one each in Asia, Africa, and Australia - retain at least 50 percent of their grasslands. Cropland ranges from 19 to 37 percent and urban areas make up less than 2 percent of these ecoregions.
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Citation:
World Resources Institute - PAGE, 2000
Sources:
- World Wildlife Fund. 1999, Ecoregions Database. Washington, DC:WWF-US.Unpublished database.
- GLCCD, 1998. Loveland, T.R., B.C. Reed, J.F. Brown, D.O. Ohlen, Z. Zhu, L. Yang, and J. Merchant. 1998. "Development of a Global Land Cover Characteristics Database and IGBP DISCover from 1-km AVHRR Data" In International Journal of Remote Sensing21(6-7): 1303-1330.
Available On-line at: Source Link.Global Land Cover Characteristics Database, Version 1.2..