AZEF 2015

The scenery from the AZEF conference venue in Goegap Nature Reserve (Photo: Wataru Tokura)

A number of us from the PCU, recently attended the Arid Zone Ecology Forum (AZEF) held in the newly built conference centre in the beautiful Goegap Nature Reserve, just outside of Springbok. The conference took place from the 5th – 8th October and was attended by about 100 delegates, with a wide range of sessions from ‘Drivers of Vegetation Pattern’, to ‘Human-Wildlife Conflict’ to ‘Climate Change Adaptation’. 

The PCU contingent was also fortunate enough to be able to attend the pre-conference farmer field day held in Leliefontein, a farming community about 100 km outside of Springbok. A few of the opportunities we had during the day were to visit a stock post where we saw a demonstration of the Biodiversity and Redmeat Cooperative (BRC) livestock handling and health programme, we heard from 'Oom Baanie' about his experiences as a traditional livestock farmer, we saw a wetland and an eroded area that are currently being restored, were taken to our very own PhD student’s (Carina Becker’s) field site, to see the experimental plots for her research on restoration of degraded lands, under the guidance of Peter Carrick, and we also visited an area which was studied as part of research looking into post-fire plant recovery by MSc student, Megan Simons from UWC. 

At the conference itself, Timm Hoffman opened the session on the ‘Impact of Renewable and Non-Renewable Energy Development’ with his talk on the potential impact of fracking on the biodiversity of the Karoo. This session also included some talks on the impacts of solar development in the Northern Cape, and generated some interesting discussions. Another presentation on the topic of rehabilitation was given by Peter Carrick with the title ‘Are we there yet? Using reference conditions and setting end targets for ecological restoration’. 

Three posters relating to work done by the PCU were also on display. Esther Mostert presented a poster on the rePhotoSA project which engages with the public to contribute to the PCU’s database of repeat landscape photographs. Gabi Fleury and Wataru Tokura are both MSc Conservation Biology students with the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology who are currently doing their research for their mini-dissertation. They each presented a poster about their research and congratulations are due to Gabi, who was the runner up for the best student poster at the conference, on her research into environmental changes that have taken place at Riemvasmaak, 20 years after resettlement. Wataru’s research is based in the Tswalu Kalahari Reserve he is looking at long-term changes in plant productivity using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) satellite data. Marianna Lot, who lives in Paulshoek and does some important fieldwork and monitoring for the PCU, also attended the conference. 

Overall a well-run conference providing many opportunities for engaging discussions and networking. For more photos please see the PCU’s Facebook page!

Article by Esther Mostert