The soils of the South American llanos and cerrado grasslands are predominantly old soils from which most of the plant nutrients have been lost. In many places there are layers of laterite (see the sidebar), which give them a red or yellow color. African savanna soils are much younger and more fertile. These shade into arid soils in the north and into wetter soils on high ground. On the southern side there are poor, exhausted, lateritic soils typical of tropical rain forest. The soils of temperate grasslands—the prairie, steppe, pampa, and veld—are deep and fertile, making them ideal agricultural soils.
