Tropical savannas are found on every continent except Antarctica, spread across a band roughly 8° to 20° north and south of the equator. They cover about one-sixth of Earth’s land surface, making them one of the planet’s most widespread biomes. The largest stretches are in Africa, South America, and Australia, with smaller but ecologically significant patches across South and Southeast Asia.
The Global Belt
Savannas sit in a geographic sweet spot between the wet tropics and the dry subtropics. They occupy latitudes where rainfall is seasonal rather than year-round: a pronounced wet season driven by shifting tropical weather patterns, followed by months of drought under dry subtropical air. This alternating cycle is what separates savannas from the rainforests closer to the equator (which stay wet) and the deserts farther from it (which stay dry). They are, in a real sense, a transitional biome, not quite forest and not quite desert.
Most tropical savannas sit below about 1,000 meters in elevation, though in some mountainous tropical regions savanna-like grasslands can extend up to nearly 3,000 meters, approaching treeline.
Africa: The Largest Savanna Region
Africa holds the most extensive tropical savannas on Earth. They sweep across West Africa south of the Sahel, through Central Africa north and south of the equatorial rainforest belt, across the vast plateaus of East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda), and deep into Southern Africa through Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and beyond. Most of Africa’s population lives in savanna and steppe regions, which gives some sense of how dominant this landscape is on the continent.
The best-known examples are the East African savannas, home to large migratory herds and iconic wildlife. But West African savannas, stretching through countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Nigeria, are equally vast. South of the Congo Basin rainforest, savannas re-emerge and extend into Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s southern reaches, and down into Botswana and South Africa.
South America: The Cerrado and Llanos
South America’s largest savanna is the Cerrado, a woodland-savanna covering the central highlands of Brazil. At roughly 2 million square kilometers, it takes up about 21% of Brazil’s territory, making it the most extensive woodland-savanna on the continent. The Cerrado is also a major biodiversity hotspot, with thousands of plant species found nowhere else.
Farther north, the Llanos span parts of Venezuela and Colombia. These are flatter, more grassland-dominated savannas that flood extensively during the wet season and dry out dramatically afterward. Smaller savanna patches also appear in Bolivia, Guyana, and Suriname.
Australia’s Northern Savannas
A broad arc of tropical savanna stretches across northern Australia, from Western Australia through the Northern Territory and into Queensland. These savannas are dominated by eucalyptus woodland with a grassy understory, giving them a different character from their African or South American counterparts. They experience the same defining pattern of wet and dry seasons and represent one of the least fragmented savanna landscapes remaining on the planet.
Asia’s Overlooked Savannas
Tropical savannas in Asia are less well known but more widespread than many people realize. The central Indian plateau, parts of western India, and the southern Deccan plateau all support savanna vegetation where annual rainfall falls between about 700 and 2,100 millimeters. Drier areas of western and central India, where rainfall drops to 400 to 1,000 millimeters annually, support a distinctive type with fine-leaved, spiny vegetation.
In Southeast Asia, savannas are found in three main areas: the continental region of Indochina (particularly drier parts of Myanmar and Thailand), eastern Java and the Lesser Sunda Islands northeast of Australia, and portions of the Philippines including Luzon and Mindoro. Modeling based on African savanna conditions suggests that roughly 1.1 million square kilometers of Asia have a very high probability of supporting savanna ecosystems, with another 900,000 square kilometers at high probability. Even small pockets exist in southern China’s Yunnan province and on Hainan Island.
Many Asian savannas have been misclassified as degraded forest, which has complicated conservation efforts. Evidence from ancient soil chemistry shows that savanna-type grasslands have existed across South Asia since at least the Late Miocene, millions of years ago, shifting in extent with ice age cycles but persisting throughout.
What Defines the Boundaries
The edges of tropical savannas are shaped primarily by rainfall. On the wetter side, closer to the equator, savannas give way to tropical forest as annual rainfall increases and the dry season shortens. On the drier side, farther from the equator, they transition into semi-arid steppe and eventually desert as rainfall drops and dry seasons grow longer.
Fire plays an equally important role. Savannas burn regularly during the dry season, and these fires prevent trees from taking over completely. Where fire is suppressed, savannas tend to thicken into woodland or forest. Where overgrazing or land clearing removes too much vegetation, savannas can tip toward desert. This makes the biome inherently dynamic: its boundaries shift over decades in response to rainfall trends, fire patterns, and human land use.
With less vegetation cover, savannas are particularly vulnerable to desertification, a process that accelerates when drought, overgrazing, and fire suppression or excess combine to push the landscape past a tipping point.