Figure 1: Distribution of the twelve grids (represented by numbers: 1 – São Gabriel, 2 – Quaraí, 3 – Soledade, 4 – Lavras do Sul, 5 – Santo Antônio das Missões, 6 – Santana da Boa Vista, 7 – Tavares, 8 – Jaguarão, 9 – Vacaria, 10 – Alegrete, 11 – Painel, 12 – Palmas) in the Campos Sulinos grasslands in south Brazil. In the representation of one 25 km² grid, the red dots point to nine 250-m long contour transects. Each transect (taken as a plot) was subsampled systematically by ten quadrats of 1 m2.