How fragmented are the world's savannas?

Fragmentation is known to be widespread in the world's tropical forests, with negative impacts on biodiversity and resilience. However, the situation in savannas is poorly known - there are no maps of how intact or fragmented savannas are, and as a result it is impossible to target conservation work appropriately. It is thought that savanna biodiversity might be particularly sensitive to fragmentation, as many savanna animals need large home ranges1. It is also likely that fragmentation disrupts the provision of many ecosystem services that are critical to the livelihoods of 100s of millions of people who live in or near savannas2.

This project will address these major knowledge gap by quantifying the intactness, connectivity and fragmentation of the world's savannas. This is both a conceptual and practical challenge: conceptually it is hard to define fragmentation in a naturally patchy and sparsely wooded landscape; practically it is difficult to distinguish open savannas from small scale agricultural landscapes using common remote sensing techniques.