Western Africa: Stretching form Nigeria to Senegal

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The Guinean Forest-Savanna Mosaic runs through West Africa, dividing the Guinean rainforest from the Sudanian savanna. The interlacing forest, savanna and grassland habitats are highly dynamic, and the proportion of forest versus other habitat components has varied greatly over time. These forest-savanna ecotones may offer critical habitat for differentiation and speciation. A number of large charismatic mammal species are found here, but national parks attract few visitors. The protected areas system is under funded and only covers two percent of the area of this ecoregion.

  • Scientific Code
    (AT0707)
  • Ecoregion Category
    Afrotropical
  • Size
    260,100 square miles
  • Status
    Critical/Endangered
  • Habitats

Description


 Location and General Description

Biodiversity Features

Current Status

Types and Severity of Threats

Justification of Ecoregion Delineation
The Guinean Forest-Savanna Mosaic ecoregion lies between the western lowland rainforest ecoregions and the Western Sudanian Savanna. The ecoregion boundaries follow the ‘mosaic of lowland rain forest and secondary grassland’ vegetation unit of White (1983). ). It is distinct from the Northern Congolian Forest-Savanna Mosaic ecoregion as it is largely separated by the ameroonian Highlands, which acts a range limit for several forest-savanna mosaic taxa. The southern boundary is defined by the transition to more continuous forest cover. The northern boundary was verified with 1 km classified land cover data derived from AVHRR satellite imagery (Loveland et al. 2000).

References
Loveland, T.R., B.C. Reed, J.F. Brown, D.O. Ohlen, Z. Zhu, L. Yang, and J.W. Merchant. 2000. Development of a global land cover characteristics database and IGBP DISCover from 1 km AVHRR data. International Journal of Remote Sensing. 21:1303-1330.

White, F. 1983. The vegetation of Africa, a descriptive memoir to accompany the UNESCO/AETFAT/UNSO Vegetation Map of Africa (3 Plates, Northwestern Africa, Northeastern Africa, and Southern Africa, 1:5,000,000). UNESCO, Paris.

Prepared by:Illisa Kelman, Paul Burgess
Reviewed by: