Steppes and temperate grasslands

In short: Steppes are wide grasslands with few trees in areas with hot summers, cold winters and fairly little rainfall. Unlike savannahs, they lie not in the tropics but in the temperate zone.

In more detail: It is usually too dry there for dense forest but too wet for a desert. Deep-rooted grasses, grazing animals and occasional fires keep the open landscape open.

In detail

• Eurasian Steppe: A broad belt of grassland stretches from Eastern Europe across Central Asia to Mongolia.
• Prairie: In North America the prairies extend across the middle of the continent east of the Rocky Mountains.
• Pampas and veld: In South America the grassland is called the Pampas, in southern Africa the veld.
• Continental climate: Far from the sea, temperatures vary greatly between summer and winter.
• Fertile soils: Over a long time, dead grasses form dark, humus-rich soils such as chernozem, which counts among the most fertile soils in the world.
• Breadbaskets: For this reason many steppes and prairies became important growing regions for wheat, maize and other cereals.
• Animals: Typical species include large grazers such as bison in North America or saiga antelopes in Central Asia, as well as many rodents and birds of prey.
• Nomadic herding: In parts of Central Asia, for example in Mongolia, herders still move across the pastures with their animals today.
• Threats: Ploughing, overgrazing and drought can dry out the soil and let it blow away, as in the dust storms in the USA in the 1930s (savannen-der-erde, klimazonen-der-erde, wuesten-und-wuestenbildung).