Tag: South Africa


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  • Women's hidden harvest: Indigenous vegetables and amaXhosa cultural survival in Hobeni Village, South Africa

Women’s hidden harvest: Indigenous vegetables and amaXhosa cultural survival in Hobeni Village, South Africa

15 October, 2018

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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

This book is about the people of Hobeni Village and the protected area that neighbors them, the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve. For over 100 years, the communities next to the Dwesa and Cwebe Forests have been caught in a conflict over natural resources. Residents were forcibly removed for decades by colonial and apartheid-era governments. After being declared a protected area in 1978, local people lost access to natural resources in the forest. Although the communities won a land claim battle in 2001, local people were prohibited from harvesting natural resources until 2016, including a variety of forest foods. Remarkably, the indigenous knowledge associated with these foods endured through the stories, actions, and resistance of local women.

This book aims to capture the experiences of these women, and to provide an accessible text documenting their stories of cultural and physical survival.

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  • Spatial Gradients of Ecosystem Health Indicators across a Human-Impacted Semiarid Savanna

Spatial Gradients of Ecosystem Health Indicators across a Human-Impacted Semiarid Savanna

09 July, 2018

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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

Drivers of soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics involve a combination of edaphic, human, and climatic factors that influence and determine SOC distribution across the landscape. High-resolution maps of key indicators of ecosystem health can enable assessments of these drivers and aid in critical management decisions. This study used a systematic field-based approach coupled with statistical modeling and remote sensing to develop accurate, high-resolution maps of key indicators of ecosystem health across savanna ecosystems in South Africa. Two 100-km2 landscapes in Bushbuckridge Local Municipality were surveyed, and 320 composite topsoil samples were collected. Mid-infrared spectroscopy was used to predict soil properties, with good performance for all models and root mean squared error of prediction (RMSEP) values of 1.3, 0.2, 5, and 3.6 for SOC, pH, sand, and clay, respectively. Validation results for the mapping of soil erosion prevalence and herbaceous cover using RapidEye imagery at 5-m spatial resolution showed good model performance with area under the curve values of 0.80 and 0.86, respectively. The overall (out-of-bag) random forest model performance for mapping of soil properties, reported using R2, was 0.8, 0.77, and 0.82 for SOC, pH, and sand, respectively. Calibration model performance was good, with RMSEP values of 2.6 g kg?1 for SOC, 0.2 for pH, and 6% for sand content. Strong gradients of increasing SOC and pH corresponded with decreasing sand content between the study sites. Although both sites had low SOC overall, important driving factors of SOC dynamics included soil texture, soil erosion prevalence, and climate. These data will inform strategic land management decisions focused particularly on improving ecosystem conditions.

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