ABSTRACT
This chapter examines different savanna degradation issues across the three tropical savanna regions: Africa, South America and Australia. It identifies particular challenges for restoring tropical savanna and discusses potential impacts of climate change. Rehabilitation of the ecosystems to maintain grazing productivity focuses on reducing woody thickening or bush encroachment with fire being the primary tool. The chapter discusses methods of managing bush encroachment, returning savanna structure after over-grazing and over-browsing, and methods for controlling weeds. It addresses methods to restore critical habitat for small mammal populations threatened by feral animals in northern Australia. An Australian study investigated current woody thickening through combining a process-based model with a Bayesian network (BN) model to determine the effect of management decisions and future environmental changes, such as climate change, on savanna structure. The chapter discusses, tropical savanna is dependent on plant available water stores over the dry season and is the first consideration for restoration.
