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Quick Key Facts. Roughly 40 percent of Earth’s land surface is covered by grasslands.. Grasslands store about one-third of Earth’s terrestrial carbon and act as important carbon sinks.. More ...
A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominated by grasses . However, sedge and rush can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, such as clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica and are found in most ecoregions of the Earth.
Temperate grassland regions include the Pampas of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, and the steppe of Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. Lands typically referred to as "prairie" tend to be in North America. The term encompasses the lower and mid-latitude of the area referred to as the Interior Plains of Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands are terrestrial biomes defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. [1] The predominant vegetation in these biomes consists of grass and/or shrubs . The climate is temperate and ranges from semi-arid to semi-humid.
Especially in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the term meadow is commonly used in its original sense to mean a hay meadow, signifying grassland mown annually in the summer for making hay. Agricultural meadows are typically lowland or upland fields upon which hay or pasture grasses grow from self-sown or hand-sown seed. [3]
The tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands are characterized by rainfall levels between 90–150 centimetres (35–59 in) per year. [1] Rainfall can be highly seasonal, with the entire year's rainfall sometimes occurring within a couple of weeks. African savannas occur between forest or woodland regions and grassland regions.
There are numerous species of plants in the highlands. [10] [11] The soil cover in the upland areas is discontinuous and immature.Soils in the Lesotho Highlands differ according to the host rock (basalt) and the influence of freeze and thaw processes; generally they are dominated by mollisols.
Land is often defined as the solid, dry surface of Earth. [1] The word land may also collectively refer the collective natural resources of Earth, [2] including its land cover, rivers, shallow lakes, its biosphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere (troposphere), groundwater reserves, and the physical results of human activity on land, such as architecture and agriculture. [3]