Читать книгу Bats of Southern and Central Africa - Ara Monadjem - Страница 40

The high-lying central plateau (‘Highveld’) of South Africa and the Drakensberg mountains are dominated by grasslands and (in the Drakensberg and its foothills) small patches of Afromontane forest. Montane grassland–forest mosaics also characterise the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe and the central Angolan Highlands. Grasslands also constitute the most widespread vegetation unit mapped across south-central Africa, where they represent a ‘wetland archipelago’ of seasonally inundated floodplains: its islands extend from the Okavango Swamps in Botswana, to lakes Bangweulu and Mweru in Zambia, and the Kamalondo Depression in the Katanga Province of the DRC. These valley grasslands are widespread in the catchments of the Chambeshi, Cubango, Upper Kafue, Kasai, Upper Lualaba, Upper Kunene and Upper Zambezi rivers across the Kalahari Plateau (White 1983).

Figure 34. (a) Interior of dense gallery forest that includes Guinean–Congolian plant species, at the source of the Zambezi River, Ikelenge Pedicle, Mwinilunga District, northwestern Zambia; (b) dense riparian forest (East African Coastal Mosaic) with emergent palms, Zambezi Delta, Mozambique.