Savannas are open woody-herbaceous systems where low woody plant density permits substantial herbaceous productivity. Savanna ecosystems cover around 20 % of Earth’s land surface, supporting the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people, harboring unique biodiversity, and regulating regional to global carbon, water, and energy fluxes. Despite shared structural features, their geographical distribution spans multiple continents adding a wide range of climates, soils, biotas, and diverse management regimes - with fire and herbivory further regulating tree-grass coexistence. Both semi-arid and tropical savannas generally exhibit pronounced wet-dry seasonality and high intra- and interannual climate variability. Rapid changes such as rising temperatures, extreme droughts and heat events, shifting precipitation patterns, altered fire regimes, and land-use intensification are reshaping savanna structure and functions. These pressures can drive nonlinear dynamics, including woody encroachment, aridification of forests, biome boundary shifts, and changes in ecosystem services, raising urgent questions about resilience and tipping points.
This session brings together observational, experimental, and modeling studies that advance our understanding of savanna function, land-atmosphere feedbacks and biome resilience in a changing world. Topics include, but are not limited to:
· carbon, water, nutrient, and energy cycles and their variability across different scales
· disturbance regime shifts and interactions with vegetation structure and function, seed banks and soils
· detection and prediction of changes in tree-grass balance, woody encroachment and critical transitions
· integration of process-based and statistical models to represent savanna dynamics and feedback mechanisms
· biodiversity, ecosystem services, and social-ecological resilience, including integration of Indigenous and local knowledge in land management