The last decade has seen the emergence of several process- based, yet simple, models of savanna dynamics. It has also seen the emergence of several synthetic data products on the structure of savannas at regional and continental scales. In this study we contrast how the structure of African and Australian savannas respond to resource gradients. We further explore whether these heuristic models can describe the pattern of savanna structure seen is these data-sets. To achieve this we use a hierarchical Bayesian approach to estimate the model parameters.
Results/Conclusions
Our results show first that the tree basal area of African and Australian respond differently to precipitation gradients. The model fitting illustrates each model is able to replicate important elements of the data. However, the structural differences in the models means that models propose different hypotheses (resource competition, disturbance) for the differences between African and Australian savannas.