Parque Nacional da Gorongosa Moçambique

Scientists have identified three main vegetation types supporting the Gorongosa ecosystem’s wealth of wildlife. Seventy-six percent is savanna—combinations of grasses and woody species that favor well-drained soils. Fourteen percent is woodlands—several kinds of forest and thickets. The rest is grasslands subjected to harsh seasonal conditions that prevent trees from growing. All three types are found throughout the system, with many different sub-types and varieties. In most places they transition into each other and are hard to tell apart.

Mount Gorongosa has rainforests, montane grasslands, riverine forests along its rivers, and forests and savanna woodlands at lower elevations. Both plateaus are covered with a kind of closed-canopy savanna, widespread in southern Africa, called “miombo,” after the Swahili word for the dominant tree, a member of the brachystegia genus. The valley is yet another world—grasslands dotted with patches of tall acacia, several kinds of savanna, so-called dry forests on sandy soils, thousands of seasonally rain-filled pans and many dense thickets around termite hills. About 20 percent of the valley’s grasslands are flooded much of the year.

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