Data for: Precipitation gradients drive high tree species turnover in the woodlands of eastern and southern Africa

Savannas cover one-fifth of the Earth’s surface, harbour substantial biodiversity, and provide a broad range of ecosystem services to hundreds of millions of people. The community composition of trees in tropical moist forests varies with climate, but whether the same processes structure communities in disturbance-driven savannas remains relatively unknown. We investigate how biodiversity is structured over large environmental and disturbance gradients in woodlands of eastern and southern Africa. We use tree inventory data from the Socio-Ecological Observatory for Studying African Woodlands (SEOSAW) network, covering 755 ha in a total of 6780 plots across nine countries of eastern and southern Africa, to investigate how alpha, beta, and phylogenetic diversity vary across environmental and disturbance gradients. We find strong climate-richness patterns, with precipitation playing a primary role in determining patterns of tree richness and high turnover across these savannas. Savannas wit..., ,