A shrubland is a landscape dominated by short, woody plants rather than tall trees or grasses. These ecosystems cover about 13% of Earth’s land surface, making them one of the planet’s major vegetation types. They hold roughly one-third of global biodiversity and store about half of all terrestrial carbon, yet they rarely get the attention that forests or rainforests do.
How Shrublands Differ From Forests and Grasslands
The defining feature of a shrubland is its plant structure. Instead of trees that grow 10, 20, or 30 meters tall, shrublands are filled with woody plants that typically range from less than 1 meter to about 5 meters in height. To qualify as a shrubland (rather than bare ground or sparse grassland), the area generally needs at least 10% canopy cover from living shrubs or small trees. In denser shrublands, the canopy can close completely overhead, creating a thick, tangled landscape that’s difficult to walk through.
Grasslands, by contrast, are dominated by grasses and herbs with few or no woody plants. Forests have a canopy of tall trees. Shrublands sit between the two, and in many places you’ll find transitional zones where all three vegetation types blend together, with scattered shrubs giving way to open grass or isolated trees poking above the shrub layer.
Where Shrublands Are Found
Shrublands exist on every continent, but they’re especially common in regions with Mediterranean climates, where summers are hot and dry and winters are cool and moist. Summer temperatures in these areas can reach 38°C (100°F), while winter temperatures hover around -1°C (30°F). Annual rainfall typically falls between 200 and 1,000 millimeters, enough to support woody plants but not enough to sustain dense forest.
Each region has developed its own name for the local shrubland type. In California, it’s called chaparral and coastal scrub. Along the Mediterranean coast, the French call it maquis or garrigue, while the Greeks know it as phyrgana. Chile has its matorral, South Africa its fynbos and strandveld, and Australia its kwongan and mallee. Despite the different names, all of these landscapes share a similar structure: dense, low, woody vegetation shaped by seasonal drought and periodic fire.
Not all shrublands are Mediterranean. Desert shrublands exist in arid regions with even less rainfall, while alpine shrublands grow at high elevations in cold, semiarid mountain environments. The soils differ considerably between types. Desert shrublands tend to have gray-brown or brown desert soils, while alpine shrublands develop on meadow soils and chestnut soils that are richer in nitrogen and organic matter near the surface.
What Makes Shrubland Plants So Tough
The plants that thrive in shrublands share a set of survival strategies built around one central problem: not enough water for part of the year. Many shrubland species have sclerophyllous leaves, a term that simply means hard, tough, stiff, and leathery. These leaves are denser and thicker than typical foliage, packed with extra fiber and lignin (the structural compound that makes wood rigid). They also contain lower concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, and water per unit of mass compared to softer-leaved plants.
This leaf design serves a clear purpose. Stiff cell walls help maintain internal water pressure even during drought. Thick outer coatings on the leaves and reinforced internal structures reduce water loss through evaporation. Some species also produce high levels of phenolic compounds, which deter herbivores from eating their precious, energy-expensive leaves. The tradeoff is slower growth. These plants invest heavily in each leaf, making them long-lasting and drought-resistant rather than fast-growing.
Fire as a Life Cycle
Fire is not a catastrophe for most shrubland ecosystems. It’s a recurring event that many species depend on for reproduction. Shrubland plants have evolved multiple strategies to survive and even exploit fire.
Some species produce seeds with thick, impermeable coats that sit dormant in the soil for years. When fire sweeps through, the intense heat cracks open these seed coats, allowing water to penetrate and germination to begin. Other plants rely on chemical signals in smoke itself. Burning vegetation releases a family of compounds called karrikins, which stimulate germination in the seeds of at least 1,200 Australian species alone. A related smoke compound called glyceronitrile also triggers germination in plants from both fire-prone and non-fire-prone ecosystems.
For species with more complex dormancy, the process works in stages. Heat shock first breaks the physical barrier of the seed coat, and then chemical compounds in smoke or smoke-soaked water release the seed from its deeper physiological dormancy. The result is a burst of new growth in the months following a fire, as thousands of seeds germinate simultaneously in the newly cleared, nutrient-rich soil.
Carbon Storage and Climate Impacts
Shrublands store significantly less carbon per acre than forests, but their vast global coverage means they hold enormous amounts of carbon collectively. This distinction matters increasingly as climate change reshapes where different vegetation types can survive. Modeling of the western United States suggests that under moderate warming scenarios, about 40% of currently forested areas could transition to shrubland or grassland. Under more severe warming, that figure rises to 58%.
These transitions carry real consequences. When forests shrink and shrublands or grasslands expand, the total carbon stored in those landscapes drops. While the new shrub and grass vegetation does actively absorb carbon from the atmosphere, it cannot fully compensate for the loss of the large carbon pools held in trees and forest soils. The net effect is a release of carbon, estimated at 60 to 82 billion grams depending on the warming scenario, just for the western U.S. alone.
Threats to Shrubland Ecosystems
Between 2000 and 2020, shrublands accounted for about 18% of all mountain vegetated landscape lost globally. The overwhelming majority of this loss, roughly 89%, was driven by human activity rather than natural events. Agricultural expansion was the single largest cause, responsible for about 83% of human-driven vegetation loss across forests, grasslands, and shrublands combined. Urban growth and mining contributed smaller shares.
Drought, however, hits shrublands disproportionately hard in certain regions. In North America, drought was responsible for nearly 49% of shrubland loss, and in Latin America, about 41%. This is notable because drought caused a much smaller share of forest and grassland losses in those same regions, suggesting that shrublands sit at a particular climate threshold where small shifts in rainfall can push them past their limits.
The expansion of human settlements into shrubland areas also creates growing wildfire risk. As homes and infrastructure push further into these fire-adapted landscapes, the overlap between human development and fire-prone vegetation, sometimes called the wildland-urban interface, increases. This concentrates both environmental and human risk in the same places, making fire management more complicated and more costly.