Country

Kenya: 11 ecoregions. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

Savanna is Kenya's baseline: five tropical grassland, savanna and shrubland ecoregions reach the country, led by the three great Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets (Northern, Southern, and Somali, the last covering over 290,000 square miles) plus the Masai xeric grasslands and the Victoria Basin forest-savanna. Against that dry matrix stand the wetter exceptions: East African montane forests and moorlands on the highlands, Eastern Arc forests, Northern Swahili coastal forests, East African mangroves on the coast, and the East African halophytics. Rainfall, not temperature, is the organizing variable at this equatorial latitude, so elevation and distance from the coast set what grows. Drought-adapted, thorny, small-leaved woody plants suit most of the country, while highland and coastal strips support genuinely moist-forest palettes.