Names,Locations, Ecosystem Basics
These are the regional names for grasslands in Europe/Asia, South America, and North America.
What are steppes, pampas, and prairies?
About this percentage of temperate grasslands has been lost or converted.
What is 46%?
Most grassland carbon is stored here.
Where is underground (in soil and roots / belowground biomass)?
These two types of land protection help reduce grassland loss.
What are protected areas and Indigenous peoples’ lands?
RISK:What is leakage?
Protecting grasslands can fail as a climate strategy if land conversion is simply pushed outside protected areas, especially if higher-carbon ecosystems like forests or peatlands are destroyed instead.
Historically, grasslands covered about this percentage of Earth’s land area.
What is 40%?
About this percentage of tropical grasslands has been lost or converted.
What is 24%?
This gas is released when grasslands are converted to cropland.
What is carbon dioxide (CO₂)?
Even though protected areas help, this is still needed to stop destruction.
What is better management?
TRADEOFF: What are some trade-offs of establishing protected areas for grasslands?
Creating protected areas can limit local grazing access, take money away from managing existing protected areas, and reduce land available for solar or wind projects.
These two natural processes help many grasslands stay balanced.
What are regular fires and grazing by large herbivores?
Nearly this fraction of remaining grasslands are considered degraded.
What is nearly half?
Protecting 1 hectare of grassland avoids about this much greenhouse gas each year.
What is 0.13 metric tons?
True or False: Protected areas completely stop ecosystem destruction.
What is False?
CLIMATE IMPACT: What are Improve Livestock Grazing and Deploy Silvopasture?
These two climate solutions help address some of the management-related climate impacts in grasslands.
Savannas have low-density tree cover that allows this to grow underneath.
What is a grass subcanopy
This human activity converts grasslands and releases stored carbon by removing native plants and plowing soil.
What is converting grasslands to cropland?
Protecting 293 million hectares avoids about this many gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
What is 0.04 gigatons?
The current 293 million hectares protected equals about this percentage of total global emissions avoided.
What is 0.04%?
COST: What are the costs and benefits of grassland protection?
Protecting grasslands costs money for land, management, and enforcement, but it can also create economic benefits like cost savings and tourism revenue.
Grasslands and savannas can be found in climates ranging from these two extremes.
What are the tropics and tundras?
Name three causes of grassland degradation.
What are overgrazing, undergrazing, invasive species, climate change, woody plant encroachment, fertilizer use, or changes in fire patterns?
If 438.5 million hectares are protected, the climate benefit could be about this much CO₂-equivalent per year.
What is 0.06 gigatons of CO₂-equivalent per year?
Why are grasslands especially important in fighting climate change?
Because they store large amounts of carbon underground, especially in soil and roots.
What is Mimis favorite squishy?
FUZZBALL