Climate characteristics associated with vegetation types of South Africa.

Vegetation types are as defined by Mucina and Rutherford [8], but with the Fynbos biome separated into fynbos, renosterveld and strandveld. Values shown are the 5% percentiles, means (in parentheses), and 95% percentiles of points sampled across national parks of South Africa. The mean annual temperatures (MAT), mean temperatures (MT) in year-quarters (q), mean annual precipitation (MAP), proportion of precipitation in the coldest quarter and ratio of precipitation in the winter half-year (Apr–Sep; Cowling et al. 2005) to summer half-year are given. The number of sampling points within each vegetation type representing the averages of each vegetation unit-stratigraphic combination are shown (n). For each environmental variable different letters indicate significant (P < 0.05) differences between vegetation categories as determined from one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Tukey tests. The values are in order of increasing proportion of MAP in coldest quarter.
Climate characteristics associated with vegetation types of South Africa.