steppe

A steppe is a large area of temperate, treeless grassland. It forms a belt across parts of Eurasia, running from Eastern Europe through the Pontic-Caspian region, southern Russia and Kazakhstan toward Mongolia and northern China. The term is also used in some regions to describe analogous grasslands in other continents, but the Eurasian steppe is its most extensive and historically significant form.

Steppe climates are typically continental, with cold winters and warm to hot summers. Precipitation is relatively low and irregular, often around a few hundred millimeters annually, making the landscape prone to drought in dry years. Soils are varied but include some of the world’s most fertile grassland soils, notably chernozems (black earths) in more humid zones, which support dense grass cover and high productivity.

Vegetation is dominated by grasses and herbaceous plants, with low shrubs in some drier areas. Common steppe grasses include feather grasses and fescues, adapted to wind exposure and grazing. The flora varies with moisture and altitude, producing a gradient from short, drought-tolerant steppe to taller, hay-meadow-like grasslands in moister pockets.

Typical fauna includes large herbivores such as gazelles and saiga antelope in Central Asia, wolves, foxes, ground squirrels, and diverse bird species. Human activity has long shaped steppe ecosystems through nomadic pastoralism, horse domestication, and, in more recent centuries, extensive grain agriculture in Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan.

Today, steppe environments face pressures from overgrazing, agricultural conversion, and climate change, leading to rapid ecological changes and concerns about desertification and biodiversity loss in some regions. Conservation and sustainable land use are central to maintaining steppe systems.