How fragmented are the world's savannas?

众所周知，世界热带森林普遍存在破碎化现象，对生物多样性和复原力产生了负面影响。然而，人们对稀树草原的情况知之甚少-没有稀树草原完整或破碎程度的地图，因此不可能适当地针对保护工作。据认为，稀树草原生物多样性可能是特别敏感的碎片化，因为许多稀树草原动物需要大的家园范围1。破碎化也可能破坏许多生态系统服务的提供，这些服务对生活在稀树草原或稀树草原附近的数亿人的生计至关重要。本项目将通过量化世界稀树草原的完整性、连通性和破碎化来解决这些主要的知识差距。这既是一个概念上的挑战，也是一个实际的挑战：从概念上讲，很难界定自然斑块和稀疏的森林景观的破碎化;实际上，很难区分开放的稀树草原从小规模的农业景观使用普通的遥感技术。

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.