Adapted from Mucina and Rutherford 2006.

This region occurs as an almost 800 km long coastal strip between the South African border with Mozambique as far south as the mouth of the Great Kei River. This high-level vegetation unit comprises a dominant forest cover interrupted by edaphically or hydrologically controlled areas of grassland, with at least a significant part of the belt being open to dense savanna vegetation, interspersed with many areas of forest and grassland. The overwhelmingly large extent of transformation of the coastal belt outside the existing strips and patches of embedded forest represents significant loss of evidence of its prior condition.

Vegetation Units of the Indian Ocean Coastal Belt Biome

Maputaland Coastal Belt
Maputaland Wooded Grassland
KwaZulu-Natal Coastal Belt
Pondoland-Ugu Sandstone Coastal Sourveld
Transkei Coastal Belt