Most of the park lies in the Central Zambezian Miombo woodlands ecoregion characterised by savanna grasslands with Miombo tree species, growing thickly in some patches, with a few small dambos (grasslands which become marshy in the rainy season) interspersed among them. In the south there are stony hills and rocky outcrops where the sparser Zambezian and Mopane woodlands ecoregion takes over, and Mopane trees adapted to hotter drier conditions replace Miombo. A thin belt of evergreen forest lines the banks of the Kafue River, which has been controversially dammed just outside the park at Itezhi-Tezhi Dam, forming a reservoir within the park. Patches of "Baikiaea" (teak) and "Cryptosepalum" evergreen forest occur in the south and west.