Post 47. Global grasslands

Grassland - own photo - 

What is grassland?

Quite simply grassland is areas on the planet where grasses are the predominant plant. Grasslands can be found right across the planet where the conditions support grasses to grow. Three types of grassland are savanna, scrubland and temperate grassland. Depending on how they are defined, global grasslands account for between 20% and 40% of the land area. [1]  

Savanna is the name given to African grassland, but grasslands can have other names. Central Eurasian grasslands are referred to as the Eurasian Steppe. The Eurasian Steppe covers a distance of 8000 kilometres from the Danube to the Pacific Ocean. In South America the grassland is known as the Pampas covering 1.2 million squared kilometres in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.  In the United States and Canada, the original grasslands are referred to as the prairie or the Great Plains and much of the land is now used for crop production e.g. wheat.The US States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan make up the Great Plains. [2] One study suggests that only 53% of the Great Plains remains as grassland [3]

Great Britain grassland - Key facts 

2 million acres of grassland lost as woodland and urban areas expanded between 1990 and 2015 where urban areas increased by 3,376 km2 – an area almost the size of Cornwall on grassland and arable land [4].

• Grassland is divided into upland, above 300m above sea level and lowland 0-300m above sea level.
• Grasslands hold huge potential for storing carbon and if they are not ploughed up will retain that carbon.
• Grasslands store a large part of their carbon underground. 
• Grassland is the UK’s biggest crop (around 12.5m hectares) and is the UK’s biggest carbon sink [5]

Sources

[1] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/grasslands-explained

[2] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/prairie

[3] https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/winter-2018/articles/understanding-grassland-loss-in-the-northern-great-plains

[4] https://www.ceh.ac.uk/press/almost-2-million-acres-gb-grassland-lost-woodland-and-urban-areas-expand

[5] https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/habitats/grassland[6]https://germinal.com/productive-grasslands-partnership/