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Revision with unchanged content. Savannas cover around twenty percent of the world s land surface. With their vast extent, these areas - such as the famous Serengeti - not only provide an important environment for many plant and animal species, including human populations, but also display a wealth of natural beauty. Fire plays a key role in shaping these ecosystems. This is because the recurrent burning during the dry season not only destroys life, but also and importantly, enables new life to begin in a complex interplay. The increased frequency of fires resulting from global warming - either caused naturally or by human agency - is likely to affect this ´game of life´ in a homogenizing negative way by reducing bio diversity or available grazing for livestock. However, besides this temporal component, fire has also a structural and spatial component that may be used as an active management tool to foster the well-being of life. For example, among successful biodiversity managers are the Australian Aboriginals with their traditionally practiced patch-burning strategy. Prior to the restricting fire policy of the modern country, they created a spatial mosaic of burnt grass patches in different successional stages, thereby enabling a diversity of animal life. This book summarizes the knowledge on fire structures including the geo metry and the area or the patchiness of burning.

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Dr. rer. nat. Stephan Getzin:Ecologist, studied savanna ecology from 1997-2000 at the University of Namibia (B.Sc.) and 2000-02 at the University of Potsdam (M.Sc.), specialized from 2003-07 in forest ecology (Canada, Germany) and spatial statistics at the University of Jena (Ph.D.), has done extensive field work in southern and eastern Africa.

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