Alternate Titles: heathland, scrub, shrubland

Scrubland, also called shrubland, heathland, or chaparral , diverse assortment of vegetation types sharing the common physical characteristic of dominance by shrubs. A shrub is defined as a woody plant not exceeding 5 metres (16.4 feet) in height if it has a single main stem, or 8 metres if it is multistemmed. The world’s main areas of scrubland occur in regions that have a Mediterranean climate—i.e., warm temperate, with mild, wet winters and long, dry summers. These areas include southern Australia, the Mediterranean region, California, Chile, and South Africa. Other scrublands are found in the semiarid tropics and in the Arctic, but smaller areas also occur in many other places. Australia, primarily because of its dry, variable climates, probably has the greatest expanse and range of scrublands. Their distribution is shown in Figure 1.


Considering their variable presentation, it is not surprising that scrublands have diverse origins, which may be natural, anthropogenic, or both. Even the natural scrublands located in Mediterranean climates exhibit great interregional differences in plant species. This lends support to the view that the vegetation from scrublands of different areas evolved convergently—i.e., different ancestral plant species developed similar characteristics in response to similar climatic conditions. Thus, many plants that resemble each other from region to region are not closely related. Instead, they are said to be ecological equivalents.

Some ancestral plants, such as those of the scrublands of California and Australia, appear to have originated in more tropical environments. The overall climatic changes that led to the early evolution of scrubland plants from ancestors adapted to moister environments can be traced back to the gradual cooling and aridification of world climates that occurred during the Cenozoic Era (65.5 million years ago to the present). In California a significant climate change—elimination of reliable summer rainfall—took place about six million years ago. Even scrublands that appear to be entirely natural in their present form—for example, flora in regions of Mediterranean climate—probably have a geologically recent history. This is because the regions in which scrublands occur had radically different climates not long ago—at the end of the last Pleistocene Glacial interval about 11,700 years ago.

In areas in which climate clearly has been influential in the development of scrubland, human impact in such forms as fire or grazing also has been important. Anthropogenic scrublands—those arising from human impact on the vegetation—may be at least as widespread as natural scrublands. They occur where humans have altered an environment formerly dominated by trees to such an extent that it is no longer able to support them; this development is usually brought about through some combination of tree clearance, burning, and grazing that leads to soil degradation. In some cases, deforestation has led to the vigorous growth of shrubby plants that form a scrubland so dense that the originally dominant trees cannot return. This situation occurred in areas of former deciduous forest in Japan that have now been replaced by thickets of dwarf bamboo (Sasa). Rarely, scrublands may result from the introduction and establishment of a vigorous alien shrub in an area of grassland or in another shrub-free region.


Most natural scrublands occur under relatively harsh conditions. Even when a scrubland’s origin is attributable to human activity, however, the transition occurs most easily in areas where aspects of the natural environment are less than optimal for trees. By contrast, in habitats more suitable for trees even severe and repeated degradation of the vegetation is likely to be followed by some tree regeneration.

Some of the most extensive natural scrublands are found in regions of semiarid or Mediterranean climate between 20° and 40° latitude in both hemispheres. The most typical scrublands are found here, especially where fires are a regular feature of the environment. They occur mainly on the west (windward) coasts of continents between about 30° and 40° latitude. Where suitable land surfaces occur, as they do on either side of the Mediterranean basin, scrublands are fringed by deserts at lower latitudes and by temperate forests at higher latitudes. The climate is characterized by mild, moist winters and hot, dry summers. Trees are unable to grow in these regions and the vegetation is dominated by woody plants with a shrubby habit. These scrublands are very diverse, both in structure and in the identity and relationship of their component plants.

Scrublands in areas with Mediterranean climates experience drought stress in late summer when high temperatures lead to high rates of evaporation of water from both the soil and the plants. As there is usually little or no rain at this season, scrubland shrubs commonly become dormant. Most develop new leaves and experience a burst of flowering in spring when temperatures rise at the end of the wet winter season. In some areas, such as Western Australia, the display of spring blossoms is so spectacular that it has become a major tourist attraction.

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In California scrubland vegetation growing under Mediterranean conditions occurs between 31° and 41° N and is called chaparral. Similar scrublands occupy areas of similar climate between 30° and 36° S in Chile, where they are called chaco and matorral. In both areas more than 80 percent of rain falls in winter. In areas of Mediterranean climate in Europe and Asia, scrublands occur over a wider climatic range, including areas receiving a larger proportion of average annual rain in summer—up to 40 percent of the annual 300 to 900 millimetres (12 to 35 inches). In these cases the wider distribution of scrubland results from a combination of climate and centuries of human influence.

In parts of the dry tropics, tall, open scrublands in which the dominant shrubs are more than five metres high—sometimes called thorn scrubs—grow across wide areas, to both the north and south of the Equator. In general they occupy the area between savannas at lower latitudes and deserts at higher latitudes. In these regions rainfall is low and erratic, and its effectiveness is further reduced by extremely high rates of potential evapotranspiration. Particularly large areas of such vegetation occur in Africa and Australia.

Scrublands also can be found in semiarid regions at temperate latitudes where the predominant season of low rainfall is typically, but not invariably, winter. A scrubland type found in several such regions is chenopod scrubland, named for its dominant shrubs, which belong to the chenopod, or saltbush, family. In Australia, for example, in areas south of the Tropic of Capricorn (23°27′ S), which receive an average annual rainfall of 150 to 250 millimetres, chenopod scrublands cover about 6 percent of the continent.

Mallee scrubland is named for the shrub-form eucalyptus (Eucalyptus) known as mallees, which are its dominant plants; these plants are found farther south between latitudes 30° and 36° S in both eastern and western Australia. It grows in regions with hot summers and low rainfall (an average of 200 to 750 millimetres annually) that occurs primarily in the winter months but exhibits more variability than rainfall in regions of Mediterranean climate.

Although the main environmental condition responsible for the growth of scrublands in dry regions is moisture shortage, other factors may play important roles. In some cases soil is a primary factor in inducing development of scrubland vegetation. An example is provided by the fynbos, a type of scrubland found between latitudes 32° and 34° S in southwestern South Africa. Although rainfall in this region has the pronounced summer deficit typical of Mediterranean climates, nutrient-poor soils developed on various ancient rocks are thought to be primarily responsible for this unusual scrubland, famous for its great diversity of plant species.

Other natural stresses producing scrubland vegetation include salt-laden winds on coastal promontories and seasonal or yearlong cold. Where climates at high latitudes are too cool or offer too brief a warm season to permit tree growth, shrubs become dominant species, forming large areas of Arctic scrubland. Comparable but smaller areas of alpine scrubland are found on many high mountains.










Population and community development and structure



Effect of agriculture on the natural development of scrublands

The natural development of semiarid scrublands is affected by cultivation of the land and by grazing by domestic animals, a destructive form of land use that can substantially alter vegetation. Even regions that have been used for farming only for relatively short periods have been rapidly and substantially altered. Scrublands that are dependent on nutrient-poor soil can be permanently destroyed by the addition of nutrients, such as fertilizers used for agriculture or that have entered the ecosystem as pollution. The amelioration of soil conditions permits invasion by plants from other vegetation types that can grow more vigorously than the original scrubland plants.

In most regions of Australia, agriculture, including the grazing of domestic animals, has been practiced for less than 200 years. The semiarid tropical scrublands are reasonably intact across large areas, but the more southerly chenopod scrublands have been altered markedly during the past 150 years by intense sheep grazing. Ninety percent of these valuable rangelands have degenerated to some extent, and 25 percent have been severely affected. During this process, 22 plant species have become so rare that they are considered to be in danger of extinction within the next 10 to 20 years if land-use practices are not changed. The number of palatable species seems to be declining, especially near watering points, although by contrast some unpalatable shrub species have become more common. This effect has greatly reduced the value of the vegetation as rangeland.

Large areas of mallee have been cleared to grow wheat, although the climate is so marginal that the crop often fails completely. Other Australian scrublands also continue to be cleared and fertilized for various agricultural purposes.

Broad-scale farming activity may create as well as destroy scrublands. This has happened in large areas of semiarid eastern Australia where grasslands were formerly dominant. Previously, when thick grass grew after a rain, it became fuel for wildfires, a process that favoured regrowth of the grass after the next rain but killed many shrub seedlings. After introduction of large numbers of domestic stock and eviction of the area’s Aboriginal inhabitants who had maintained the fire regime, the grass was mostly eaten by sheep and fires became less frequent. As a consequence, very large areas were invaded by “woody weeds”—unpalatable native shrubs that have created new areas of scrublands and greatly diminished the area’s grazing value.

Wherever climatic conditions are marginal for tree growth, vegetation is vulnerable to alteration by human activities. Trees disappear as a result, often to be replaced by shrubs. This vegetational degradation may have occurred so long ago as to be effectively permanent, leading modern observers to believe initially that these scrublands represent the natural, climate-induced vegetation of those areas. Scrublands of the Mediterranean region that have been affected by human activity for centuries, called by local names such as garigue, maquis, and macchia, are examples. Many areas have been converted from forest to scrubland by tree clearance, heavy grazing especially by goats, frequent burning, and consequent soil erosion. In these ways, evergreen forests of pine and oak have been replaced by scrublands in places throughout the northern Mediterranean fringe from Spain to Lebanon. Similar changes can be observed at similar latitudes as far eastward as China.

Occasionally, scrublands may result from the introduction of, and subsequent dominance by, an alien shrub species in a region in which woody plants are absent or rare. This has occurred in the grass-dominated, seasonally flooded areas of northernmost Australia to which the giant sensitive plant (Mimosa pigra) was introduced from Mexico; it since has multiplied to form extensive areas of dense, unnatural scrubland. A similar process is occurring in the Mitchell grasslands in inland northeastern Australia, an area being invaded by the introduced African shrub Acacia nilotica.

Ecological importance of fire to scrubland communities

Fire is essential to the health of most scrublands. Without periodic burning, many scrublands would alter in composition; some would gradually develop into tree-dominated vegetation. Fires serve to kill young trees or to keep them in a shrub form. They also permit reproduction by the fire-adapted scrubland flora. Most scrubland plants are well adapted to survive fire, generally in one of two ways: Some resprout from the stem base or from underground organs after the aboveground parts have been destroyed; others regenerate from seeds that have been shed on the burned ground or that lie dormant in the soil. Many scrubland plants produce seeds that can remain dormant for long periods, a useful adaptation in an environment in which periods suitable for the establishment of seedlings are infrequent and unpredictable.

Many scrubland shrubs develop a swollen stem base or an underground woody organ called a lignotuber, which, because it is at or just below the soil surface, is protected from damage even during fires that completely remove the shrub’s crown. After a fire, buds under the woody outer layers of this organ quickly grow, using the undamaged original root system; a new crown develops within a few months. Similarly, many herbaceous plants have fleshy bulbs, rhizomes, or other types of underground stem from which green shoots rapidly develop in the wake of a fire that destroyed earlier shoots. Several species are stimulated to flower by fire, so that all individuals bloom simultaneously a few weeks after being burned. An example of this behaviour is the conspicuous Australian grass trees (Xanthorrhoea).

Other plants hold their seeds in woody fruits that remain closed until being opened by fire. Only then do the seeds fall to the ground, which has been temporarily fertilized by ash and cleared of dead leaf litter, competing plants, seed-harvesting ants, and parasitic molds. Such plants typically depend on fire to provide the conditions necessary for reproduction and are unable to regenerate without appropriate intervals of burning. For example, a common and attractive shrub of coastal scrublands in eastern Australia, Banksia ericifolia, is eliminated not only if an area is burned more often than every fifth year—the time taken for seedlings to set their first seed—but also if it is burned less often than every 40 years—the plant’s life span.

Many scrubland shrubs shed seeds as they ripen, even in years when fire does not occur. The seeds remain dormant in the soil until stimulated to germinate by heat or, in some cases, by chemicals in the smoke released by a fire. Heat stimulation is required for plant germination in several families, including the bean family (many species of Acacia) and the rose family (the Californian chamiso Adenostoma fasciculatum, which is stimulated to germinate by exposure to an air temperature of 90° to 95° C [194° to 203° F]).

Biological productivity

Scrublands typically grow under conditions of high environmental stress. The typical climatic environment experienced by scrublands includes long periods of hot, dry weather in which lack of moisture is a limiting factor for plant growth. Furthermore, soil nutrient levels typically are very low. These factors restrict rates of plant photosynthesis. There may be a burst of growth during briefly favourable conditions, such as in spring in Mediterranean climatic regions, but productivity overall is not high. (For a full discussion of productivity see biosphere: The organism and the environment: Resources of the biosphere.)

The dominant shrubs may be deciduous, losing their leaves for significant periods of time when moisture is in short supply; if they are evergreen their leaves are small and tough and total leaf area is relatively low. They also typically have a substantial proportion of their biomass (dry weight of organic matter in an area) in the form of extensive root systems or lignotubers or other large underground organs. Only about half of the living vegetation comprises aboveground shoots, and only a small part of that is in the form of leaves or other green parts such as stems in which photosynthesis takes place. It is therefore easy to see why production of new plant material is slow.

Some of the most complete information on scrubland productivity has been assembled from data compiled on Californian chaparral. While values derived from studies of scrublands in climatically comparable parts of France and Greece are similar, greater variation occurs in other shrub-dominated vegetation in less similar environments.

Chaparral 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) tall had a biomass of 46.2 metric tons per hectare, of which 16.7 was woody shoots, 3.7 leaves, 12.2 roots, and 13.6 litter on the ground. The annual accumulation of aboveground biomass in that system was 4.12 metric tons per hectare, of which 2.82 metric tons consisted of litter, with 2.64 metric tons of litter decomposing in the same period.

While such values typically demonstrate steady accumulation of biomass—in this case an annual aboveground increment of 0.13 metric tons per hectare—they do not take into account the occasional removal of aboveground parts through episodic disturbance, most commonly through fire. Productivity is more rapid during early stages of post-fire regrowth. For example, in one stand of French garigue, as the scrubland increased in height from 0.2 metres to 1.5 metres over a period from 1 to 10 years after a fire, its productivity declined from 4.7 to 3.2 metric tons per hectare per year.

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