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Publication Date
1981
Description
A land-resource survey is being made in tropical South America with the objective of creating a base for development and transfer of improved food-crop and pasture-plant germ plasm-based technology. Preference was given to study of the 200 million ha of native savannas, although the survey now stretches across the Amazon forests to southern Brazil. Land information is reduced to a common base, with land systems defined as repetitive patterns of climate, landscape, and soils. They are delineated directly onto satellite and side-looking radar imagery following field work and climatic analyses. Within land systems the vegetation and soils are separately described and estimated according to their occurrence on landscape facets that follow the principal topographic, vegetation, and soil sequences within the land systems. Land-resource information is recorded in a computerized system for storage, retrieval, and production of analytical maps and data-printouts in order to facilitate speedy and comprehensive analyses. Savanna regions are found from Venezuela into southern Brazil. They can be separated on the basis of soil drainage into poorly drained and well-drained savannas. In spite of their widespread geographical distribution, well-drained savannas occupy a well-defined habitat delimited by the climatic potential for growth of natural vegetation; they can be discriminated from other physiognomic vegetation classes on the sole basis of total wet-season potential evapo-t:ranspiration. Wet-season mean monthly temperatures separate lowland from higher-land savannas. Savanna landscape and soil features were compared. The well-drained savanna soils are mainly oxisols; their fertility status is generally very poor. The findings of the survey are discussed in terms of their contribution to the development of improved germ plasm-based pasture technology to help increase cattle production in the savannas of tropical America.
Citation
Cochrane, T T., "Savanna Ecosystems in Tropical South America: Findings from a Computerized Land-Resource Survey" (1981). IGC Proceedings (1981-2023). 3.
(URL: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/igc/1981/section5/3)
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Savanna Ecosystems in Tropical South America: Findings from a Computerized Land-Resource Survey
A land-resource survey is being made in tropical South America with the objective of creating a base for development and transfer of improved food-crop and pasture-plant germ plasm-based technology. Preference was given to study of the 200 million ha of native savannas, although the survey now stretches across the Amazon forests to southern Brazil. Land information is reduced to a common base, with land systems defined as repetitive patterns of climate, landscape, and soils. They are delineated directly onto satellite and side-looking radar imagery following field work and climatic analyses. Within land systems the vegetation and soils are separately described and estimated according to their occurrence on landscape facets that follow the principal topographic, vegetation, and soil sequences within the land systems. Land-resource information is recorded in a computerized system for storage, retrieval, and production of analytical maps and data-printouts in order to facilitate speedy and comprehensive analyses. Savanna regions are found from Venezuela into southern Brazil. They can be separated on the basis of soil drainage into poorly drained and well-drained savannas. In spite of their widespread geographical distribution, well-drained savannas occupy a well-defined habitat delimited by the climatic potential for growth of natural vegetation; they can be discriminated from other physiognomic vegetation classes on the sole basis of total wet-season potential evapo-t:ranspiration. Wet-season mean monthly temperatures separate lowland from higher-land savannas. Savanna landscape and soil features were compared. The well-drained savanna soils are mainly oxisols; their fertility status is generally very poor. The findings of the survey are discussed in terms of their contribution to the development of improved germ plasm-based pasture technology to help increase cattle production in the savannas of tropical America.
