How fragmented are the world's savannas?

已知破碎化在世界热带森林中普遍存在，对生物多样性和恢复力产生负面影响。然而，人们对稀树草原的情况知之甚少——没有关于稀树草原的完整程度或破碎程度的地图，因此不可能有针对性地开展保护工作。据认为，稀树草原的生物多样性可能对破碎化特别敏感，因为许多稀树草原动物需要大片的栖息地。碎片化还可能破坏许多生态系统服务的提供，而这些服务对生活在热带草原或其附近的数亿人的生计至关重要。该项目将通过量化世界稀树草原的完整性、连通性和碎片化来解决这些主要的知识差距。这既是一个概念上的挑战，也是一个实践上的挑战：从概念上讲，很难在自然斑驳和树木稀少的景观中定义碎片；实际上，利用一般的遥感技术很难区分开阔的热带稀树草原和小规模的农业景观。

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.