Veld in the context of "Karoo desert"

Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands are terrestrial biomes defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The predominant vegetation in these biomes consists of grass and/or shrubs. The climate is temperate and ranges from semi-arid to semi-humid. The habitat type differs from tropical grasslands in the annual temperature regime and the types of species found here.

The habitat type is known as prairie in North America, pampas in South America, veld in Southern Africa and steppe in Asia. Generally speaking, these regions are devoid of trees, except for riparian or gallery forests associated with streams and rivers.

In ecology, a disturbance is a change in environmental conditions that causes a pronounced change in an ecosystem. Disturbances often act quickly and with great effect, to alter the physical structure or arrangement of biotic and abiotic elements. A disturbance can also occur over a long period of time and can impact the biodiversity within an ecosystem. Ecological disturbances include fires, flooding, storms, insect outbreaks, trampling, human presence, earthquakes, plant diseases, infestations, volcanic eruptions, impact events, etc.

Not only invasive species can have a profound effect on an ecosystem, native species can also cause disturbance by their behavior. Disturbance forces can have profound immediate effects on ecosystems and can, accordingly, greatly alter the natural community’s population size or species richness. Because of these and the impacts on populations, disturbance determines the future shifts in dominance, various species successively becoming dominant as their life history characteristics, and associated life-forms, are exhibited over time.