Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands
Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands
The Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands form a narrow lowland belt at the base of the Himalayas, stretching from northwest India across the inner river valleys of southern Nepal to southwest Bhutan, where it is known variously as the Terai and the Dooars. It is a mosaic of tall riverside grasslands, savannas, and evergreen and deciduous broadleaf forests, and it harbors some of the world's tallest grasslands, with stands more than 7 meters high; characteristic grasses include baruwa (Tripidium bengalense) and kans grass (Saccharum spontaneum), while sal (Shorea robusta) dominates the forest patches. The climate is hot, humid, and wet during the summer monsoon with temperatures reaching 40C, then cooler in winter with morning ground frost, and the annual cycle of monsoon floods deposits the silt that keeps the grasslands renewed. This habitat shelters globally threatened wildlife, including the greater one-horned rhinoceros, Bengal tiger, and Asian elephant, but the grasslands themselves are among the most reduced and threatened in the world, largely lost to agricultural conversion and altered water flows.
RESOLVE 311
Indomalayan
13,350 sq mi
Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
Landscape type
Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
Plant region
Indomalayan
Region footprint
13,350 sq mi
Habitat pressure
Nature Imperiled (Dinerstein NNH 4)
Source & care
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Use this as the broad planting pattern for the region: Warm grasslands and savannas where grasses dominate and trees are scattered, maintained by seasonal rainfall, grazing, and fire. They support large herbivore communities and respond sharply to wet–dry cycles. For garden decisions, pair that context with the plant list below, then narrow by your site's light, water, soil, and mature-size constraints.
Range & origins
Marker placed inside the RESOLVE 2017 polygon at 26.7°N, 87.0°E.
Region through time
Modern footprint
RESOLVE 2017 maps 13,350 sq mi
This boundary is a modern ecological footprint for Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands, not a permanent line on the planet. It is useful for today's plant and wildlife context because it follows recurring vegetation, climate, landform, and disturbance patterns.
Why here
tropical & subtropical grasslands, savannas & shrublands conditions
The region sits in the Indomalayan realm and is classed as tropical & subtropical grasslands, savannas & shrublands. Elevation, moisture, fire, soils, coasts, and human land use can all make the real landscape more varied than a single map color suggests.
Change pressure
Nature Imperiled
Plotwright shows this as the current RESOLVE footprint. Over decades to centuries, warming, disturbance, invasive species, land use, and restoration can move the living edge of a region even when the reference map stays fixed.
Planting collections
Finished planting recipes where every member can handle this region's climate range. The fit badge uses the collection's most sensitive plant, so a resilient collection is a safer starting point than any single standout.
Climate-resilient · 2 plants
Bright shade foundation
A part-shade planting with shrub structure and low foliage contrast.
Climate-resilient · 8 plants
Climate-resilient natives for warming zones (eastern NA)
A pollinator-supporting palette of eastern North American natives with broad hardiness ranges and wide native distributions. Built for gardeners who want a planting that can handle warming zones without giving up wildlife value.
Climate-resilient · 3 plants
Kitchen patio planters
A compact edible collection for containers, patios, and near-door harvesting.
Climate-resilient · 6 plants
Mediterranean drought-tolerant edible
A low-water edible palette of culinary herbs + a hardy grape for hot dry sunny sites. Mediterranean-origin plants thrive on neglect; their primary failure mode is overwatering, not underwatering.
Climate-resilient · 9 plants
Native pollinator border (eastern US)
A continuous-bloom native pollinator strip for eastern North America. Covers spring through frost with host + nectar plants spanning monarchs, native bees, hummingbirds, and specialist Lepidoptera. Little bluestem provides the matrix grass + Hesperiidae host.
Climate-resilient · 4 plants
Sunny pollinator border
A durable sunny border with summer bloom, seedheads, and upright winter texture.
Similar planting regions
Browse other regions with a similar hot, dry-summer rhythm. Their plant lists can suggest species and combinations worth comparing.
RESOLVE 34 - Afrotropic
Angolan mopane woodlands
The Angolan mopane woodlands stretch across southwestern Angola and northern Namibia, running along the Owambo Basin and surrounding the salt flats of the Etosha Pan. As the name suggests, the ecoregion is dominated by the mopane tree (Colophospermum mopane), which grows as a single-stemmed tree up to about 10 meters tall or, where conditions are harsher, as a dense shrub, alongside associated Acacia, Combretum, and Commiphora species. The climate is dry, with rainfall concentrated in the summer and peaking in late summer. The woodlands shelter elephants, black and white rhinoceros, lion, and cheetah, as well as the near-endemic black-faced impala, and the wider region is anchored by protected areas including Namibia's Etosha National Park. Mopane here also has a direct human use, as the caterpillars of the mopane emperor moth are gathered locally as food.
Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
Zones 11a-12b
+4.2°F by 2070
74,248 sq mi
NNH tier 2
RESOLVE 35 - Afrotropic
Angolan scarp savanna and woodlands
The Angolan scarp savanna and woodlands form a long, narrow strip along the coast of Angola, running from the Atlantic shore up the steep west-facing escarpment that climbs roughly 1,000 meters to the country's central plateau. Vegetation shifts dramatically with elevation, grading from dry woodland and wooded grassland—where baobab, Strychnos, and Acacia welwitschii grow—up to humid mist and cloud forests whose canopy includes Khaya anthotheca, Bombax buonopozense, and Spathodea campanulata. The climate is tropical with summer rains; the coastal belt, cooled by the Benguela Current, stays humid but receives relatively little rain, while the escarpment is far wetter. Despite being poorly studied and only partly protected within reserves such as Quiçãma National Park, the region is rich in endemics, including the red-crested turaco and the grey-striped francolin, and is classified as Vulnerable. For gardeners, the showy African tulip tree (Spathodea campanulata), grown as an ornamental in warm climates worldwide, is native to these escarpment forests.
Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
Zones 12a-13b
+3.7°F by 2070
52,811 sq mi
NNH tier 4
RESOLVE 36 - Afrotropic
Angolan wet miombo woodlands
The Angolan wet miombo woodlands blanket most of the central Angolan plateau and extend north into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sitting largely at elevations between about 1,000 and 1,500 meters. The defining habitat is miombo woodland, a moist deciduous broadleaf savanna dominated by legume trees of the family Fabaceae (subfamily Caesalpinioideae), especially the genera Brachystegia, Julbernardia, and Isoberlinia, with grassland and sandy-soil openings between the stands. The climate is tropical and notably wetter than the surrounding savanna, with rainfall strongly concentrated in the hot summer months from roughly November to March. The ecoregion is the stronghold of the giant sable antelope (Hippotragus niger variani), a critically endangered Angolan endemic protected at Cangandala National Park, and it also harbors a strict-endemic rodent, Vernay's climbing mouse. For gardeners, the signature native flora here are the canopy-forming Brachystegia and Isoberlinia legume trees that give the miombo its character.
Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
Zones 12a-13b
+4.0°F by 2070
173,318 sq mi
NNH tier 4
RESOLVE 181 - Australasia
Arnhem Land tropical savanna
The Arnhem Land tropical savanna covers the rugged Arnhem Land peninsula and its offshore islands, including the Tiwi Islands, Groote Eylandt, and the Wessel Islands, in Australia's Northern Territory. Eucalypt open forests dominate the landscape, led by Darwin stringybark (Eucalyptus tetrodonta) and Darwin woollybutt (Eucalyptus miniata) over a tall understory of Sorghum grasses, interspersed with monsoon rainforest patches, mangroves, and Melaleuca swamp forests. The climate is tropical and strongly monsoonal, with a summer wet season and a largely rainless dry season. Long isolation has made it exceptionally diverse: over 1,900 plant taxa have been recorded, at least 200 of them found nowhere else, and a 2017 assessment found that 36% of the ecoregion lies within protected areas such as Kakadu National Park.
Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
Zones 13a-13b
+4.0°F by 2070
61,266 sq mi
NNH tier 2
RESOLVE 37 - Afrotropic
Ascension scrub and grasslands
This ecoregion covers Ascension Island, a small volcanic British Overseas Territory in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, roughly 1,200 km northwest of St. Helena and about 1,700 km from the African mainland. Its natural cover is dry grassland and scrubland with few if any trees, with much of the north and west marked by barren, desert-like ground broken by patches of grass and the endemic Ascension spurge (Euphorbia origanoides), the island's only endemic lowland plant. The climate is subtropical and semi-arid, with temperatures ranging from about 10 to 32 degrees Celsius and low mean annual rainfall around 709 mm, divided into a hotter season and a cooler one. Before human settlement the island supported only 25 to 30 plant species, ten of them endemic, including the shrub Oldenlandia adscensionis, the grass genus Sporobolus, and several endemic ferns such as Asplenium ascensionis and Pteris adscensionis. Today the island is one of the most important seabird breeding sites in the tropical Atlantic, home to the endemic Ascension frigatebird (Fregata aquila) and a globally significant green turtle nesting population, though introduced prickly pear and Mexican thorn now press on its sparse native flora.
Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
Zones 13b
+2.7°F by 2070
36 sq mi
NNH tier 4
RESOLVE 564 - Neotropic
Belizian pine savannas
The Belizian pine savannas ecoregion lies almost entirely in Belize along the northwestern Caribbean coast, with only a few very small tracts reaching into neighboring Mexico and Guatemala. Its signature habitat is open savanna dominated by Caribbean pine (Pinus caribaea), woven into a mosaic that also includes calabash tree, white oak species, nanche, and everglades (Paurotis) palm, with closed pine forests in the premontane interior near the Maya Mountains. The climate is tropical monsoon (Koppen Am), warm through the year with a pronounced dry season and roughly 2,000 mm of annual rainfall in the wetter premontane zone. Fire shapes the landscape here: the Caribbean pine depends on periodic low-intensity wildfires to regenerate, and the savannas are the stronghold of the endangered yellow-headed Amazon parrot, now largely restricted to this region and adjacent parts of Mexico and Guatemala. For gardeners, several ornamental natives belong to this flora, including the calabash tree (Crescentia), nanche (Byrsonima crassifolia), and the everglades palm (Acoelorraphe).
Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands
Zones 13b
+3.6°F by 2070
1,093 sq mi
NNH tier 3
Sources & citations
Cite this page
For lesson plans, articles, or regional planting notes that use this Plotwright page. To cite the underlying ecoregion framework or a specific editorial profile, use the source cards below.
Plotwright. (n.d.). Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands (Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands). Retrieved 2026, June 14, from https://plotwright.garden/regions/resolve-311
Sources for this region
This page cites Plotwright first for the compiled view, then lists the upstream framework, climate, and editorial source pages so readers can cite the original material directly.
RESOLVE 2017 Terrestrial Ecoregions (Dinerstein et al.)
Primary ecoregion framework
Backs 4 fields
RESOLVE id
Biome + realm
Area
NNH tier