Grass-dominated ecosystems that contain a significant number of widely spaced trees are termed savannas. Trees may make up as little as 5 percent or as much as 30 percent of the cover of all plants in savannas, but grasses and grasslike plants form a...

A savanna is a dry grassland with scattered trees. Most ecologists agree that a characteristic savanna has an open or sparse canopy with 10–25% tree cover, a dominant ground cover of annual and perennial grasses, and less than 20 in (50 cm) of...

A savanna or savannah is a tropical or subtropical woodland ecosystem. Savannas are characterised by the trees being sufficiently small or widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. It is often believed that savannas are characterized by widely...

THE CONSUL'S WIFE By W.T. Tyler Henry Holt. 216 pp. $24 Longing for the heart of darkness? Hugh Mathews has been there and back (back to Northern Virginia, in fact). Booted out of a cushy post in prewar Beirut after making trouble...

Over the vast Savannas of Africa, one is often likely to observe the Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta), as that species is the most common. The other hyenas are the Striped Hyena (Hyaena hyaena), found only in the Ngama Hills; the Brown Hyena (Hyaena...

The complex science of DNA analysis is now helping protect elephants by showing police and conservationists the source of black-market ivory.The price of ivory has nearly quadrupled in recent years, prompting poachers to kill more elephants to sell their tusks illegally.Protecting the giant beasts is...

Global warming could spell the end of the world's largest remaining tropical rain forest, transforming the Amazon into a grassy savanna before end of the century, researchers said Friday.Jose Antonio Marengo, a meteorologist with Brazil's National Space Research Institute, said that global warming, if left...