Advancing transdisciplinary research on Madagascar's grassy biomes to support resilience in ecosystems and livelihoods

Madagascar-wide metadata relating to Malagasy Grassy Biomes. The understanding of vegetation dynamics in tropical grassy biomes is severely limited across spatio-temporal scales, limiting effective management and support for livelihoods and biodiversity. Despite their extent, utility, and central importance to people and ecosystem function, grassy biomes are often uncritically regarded as degraded, valueless landscapes that result primarily from destructive anthropogenic forces. Moreover, this characterization is often presented without investigation of their history, biodiversity, or ecological complexity. Iconically, Madagascar’s grassy biomes cover approximately 80% of the island’s land surface today and exemplify core challenges to understanding tropical grassy ecosystems and their interactions with anthropogenic activities across spatio-temporal scales. Intersections between human history and environmental change have sparked debates about the role of land use in shaping grassy biomes (e.g., pastoralism, cultivation, fire use), echoing land use debates globally, and highlighting obstacles to ecosystem and livelihood resilience. Like many tropical biodiversity hotspots, Madagascar faces converging challenges that can be aided by an improved understanding of grassy ecosystems and the livelihoods they support, including food and health insecurity, economic inequities, biodiversity loss, climate change, land conversion, and limited resource access. Centered on improved understanding and management of grassy biomes, we present a framework to guide transdisciplinary research across the tropics by: (1) establishing a common terminology; (2) summarising data contributions and knowledge gaps that reflect those in other tropical regions; (3) identifying priority research questions; and (4) highlighting transdisciplinary and inclusive approaches to resolve knowledge gaps and co-benefit ecosystems and livelihoods. 

Methods
The data was collected through a systematic review of publically available manuscripts. The assosciated manuscript is published in Ecological Monographs (Phelps et al. in press).