Koedoe最新文献

{"title":"Evaluating Environmental Impact Assessment report quality in South African national parks","authors":"L. Sandham, Carla Huysamen, F. Retief, A. Morrison‐Saunders, A. Bond, J. Pope, R. Alberts","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1631","url":null,"abstract":"This research evaluates Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report quality for a selected sample of development projects in South African national parks. It applies an adapted version of an international EIA report quality review package to 24 developments within 10 national parks, across three EIA regimes. The results suggest good EIA report quality across all four quality review areas, with improvement over time, but also highlight particular weaknesses in terms of dealing with waste and, to a lesser extent, with significance and mitigation. To build on this research, the development of a sector-specific EIA report quality review package is recommended, with more emphasis on the strategic context, waste and water-related aspects. The conclusion is that EIA is well positioned to remain an important decision support instrument for developments within national parks. Conservation implications: The results show that EIA reports for developments in South African national parks are generally of sufficient quality for decision-making that benefits conservation. However, weaker performance regarding waste, significance determination, water-related impacts and a lack of consideration of strategic context requires a conservation-specific EIA report quality review package to improve report quality in the areas of weakness and thereby increase the value of EIA as an instrument for environmental governance and sustainable development in conservation areas.","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73852942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A preliminary assessment of the presence and distribution of invasive and potentially invasive alien plant species in Laikipia County, Kenya, a biodiversity hotspot","authors":"A. Witt, Winnie Nunda, T. Beale, D. Kriticos","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1605","url":null,"abstract":"Invasive alien species are those plants and animals that have been introduced by people, either intentionally or unintentionally, outside of their natural range or outside of their natural dispersal potential, and are destructive to the environment in which they have established and proliferated (UNEP 2002; Witt & Luke 2017). Invasive alien species (plants and animals) pose a significant threat to biodiversity (Pyšek et al. 2012; Randall 1996; Vilà et al. 2011). For example, a global meta-analysis by Vilà et al. (2011) found that invasive plants decrease native plant species diversity and abundance. These plant invasions may have cascading trophic effects (Bailey, Schweitzer & Whitham 2001; Sakai et al. 2001; Valentine, Roberts & Schwartzkopf 2007) by decreasing animal fitness and abundance (Vilà et al. 2011). This is especially an issue for protected areas where the primary goal is biodiversity conservation (eds. Foxcroft et al. 2013; Funk & Vitousek 2007; Hobbs & Humphries 1995).","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89576672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Interpretation needs and preferences of visitors to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park","authors":"P. van der Merwe, M. Saayman, E. Botha","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1613","url":null,"abstract":"The main objective of most national parks in the world, and in South Africa specifically, is to conserve the environment or biodiversity (South African Government 1976), but this has proven to be quite a difficult task to perform because of declining public funding (Eagles 2014). South African National Parks (SANParks; the managing body of South African national parks) is therefore primarily a self-funding entity, as ecotourism activities generate 80% of the total income of national parks (SANParks 2018). Ecotourism thus contributes to sustaining the conservation objectives of the national parks (SANParks 2018).","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78105842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessing water conditions for Heleophryne rosei tadpoles and the conservation relevance","authors":"Z. Ebrahim, A. D. de Villiers, J. Measey","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1581","url":null,"abstract":"Southern Africa has a rich assemblage of anuran amphibians (South Africa has 12 families). Of these, one entire family is endemic to the southern African region (Poynton 1964): the ghost frog family, Heleophrynidae. These torrent-adapted species live in and around fast-flowing montane streams. Adults are cryptic, hiding in crevices and emerging at night, while tadpoles are relatively easy to find in streams and easily identified by their large, specially adapted oral suckers used for grazing on algae-covered rocks (Boycott 2004). The two genera of the ghost frog family contain seven species, one in the genus Hadromophryne (Natal cascade frog) and six in the genus Heleophryne (ghost frogs); the latter is confined to the Cape Fold Mountains (Channing, Boycott & Van Hensbergen 1988) across south-west South Africa’s winter rainfall region (Colville et al. 2014). The Table Mountain Ghost Frog, Heleophryne rosei, is confined to the Table Mountain massif (Boycott & de Villiers 1986).","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75269283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Woody cover mapping in the savanna ecosystem of the Kruger National Park using Sentinel-1 C-Band time series data","authors":"M. Urban, Kai Heckel, C. Berger, P. Schratz, I. Smit, T. Strydom, J. Baade, C. Schmullius","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1621","url":null,"abstract":"Savanna ecosystems are dominated by different densities of grasses and woody plants with inter-annual changes because of dry and wet seasons. They cover half of the African continent and around 20% of the global land surface and are of great significance for ecology (e.g. living environment) and economy (e.g. fuelwood, timber) (Kutsch et al. 2008; Main et al. 2016; Scholes & Walker 1993). The savanna ecosystems of South Africa are shaped by disturbance processes such as droughts, fire and herbivory (Druce et al. 2008; Scholes & Archer 1997; Stevens et al. 2016), as well as anthropogenic impacts like climate change (e.g. increase in atmospheric CO2) or management actions. It is therefore not surprising that these savannas have been undergoing various changes during the last decades (Buitenwerf et al. 2012; Skowno et al. 2016). Information about changes in woody cover and above-ground biomass (AGB) in national parks (e.g. Kruger National Park [KNP]) is important for park management and conservation efforts, as changes in woody cover are likely to have effects on other ecosystem patterns and processes. For example, an increase in woody cover will lead to a reduction in grass and herbaceous biomass (Berger et al. 2019), which will have cascading effects on herbivores (i.e. favouring browsers to grazers [Smit & Prins 2015]) and fire regimes (i.e. reducing fire frequency [Smit et al. 2012]). The savanna ecosystems in South Africa, which are predominantly characterised by woody vegetation (e.g. shrubs and trees) and grasslands with annual phenological cycles, are shaped by ecosystem processes such as droughts, fires and herbivory interacting with management actions. Therefore, monitoring of the intraand inter-annual vegetation structure dynamics is one of the essential components for the management of complex savanna ecosystems such as the Kruger National Park (KNP). To map the woody cover in the KNP, data from European Space Agency’s (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellite (C-Band vertical– vertical [VV]/vertical–horizontal [VH]) for the years 2016 and 2017, at 10 m spatial resolution and repeated acquisitions every 12 days, were utilised. A high-resolution light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data set was reclassified to produce woody cover percentages and consequently used for calibration and validation. Woody cover estimation for different spatial resolutions was carried out by fitting a random forest (RF) model. Model accuracy was assessed via spatial cross-validation and revealed an overall root mean squared error (RMSE) of 22.8% for the product with a spatial resolution of 10 m and improved with spatial averaging to 15.8% for 30 m, 14.8% for 50 m and 13.4% for 100 m. In addition, the product was validated against a second LiDAR data set, confirming the results of the spatial crossvalidation of the model. The methodology of this study is designed for savanna vegetation structure mapping based on height estimates by using open-source software an","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77703973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Community-based ecotourism project in communities adjacent to the Addo Elephant National Park: Will households pay for it?","authors":"B. Akinyemi, A. Mushunje","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1571","url":null,"abstract":"South Africa’s approach to the conservation of nature was a colonialist method, which was built on the idea that households living in communities adjacent to the protected areas (PAs) should be excluded to ensure optimum protection of plants, animals and the environment (Paterson 2007). However, this exclusionary approach to conservation is gradually giving way to a more inclusive approach to conservation, whereby communities surrounding PAs actively participate in both conservation and the sustainable use of the resources in Pas, which is a hallmark of the modern conservation model (Algotsson 2006; Balint 2007; Fabricius, Koch & Magome 2001; Pelser, Redelinghuys & Velelo 2013). The inclusion of local communities in conservation is important when viewed from the perspective of the effective environmental governance (EG), whereas, their exclusion often makes enforcement of conservation policies extremely difficult (Aswani & Weiant 2004).","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80142680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessment results (2015–2018) of re-established poached cycad trees in Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape, South Africa","authors":"H. Bezuidenhout","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1626","url":null,"abstract":"On 12 February 2015, the South African Police Services confiscated 39 Encephalartos longifolius plants (Thunberg’s cycad or Zuurberg cycad) and nine Encephalartos lehmannii (Karoo cycad) plants illegally removed from the wild on a farm adjacent to the Darlingtondam section of Addo Elephant National Park (AENP). The confiscated plants were delivered to AENP on Saturday, 14 February 2015 (Figure 1).","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82552079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Review: Conservation Biology in sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"M. Herbst","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1635","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"38 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1635","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72467168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Climate change and the ownership of game: A concern for fenced wildlife areas","authors":"A. Blackmore","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1594","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1594","url":null,"abstract":"Climate change is increasingly being cited as one of the major challenges facing the conservation of biodiversity (Bellard et al. 2012), and with this realisation a greater emphasis is being placed on protected areas and other conserved natural areas (i.e. game farms and ranches) as refugia as well as ‘island habitats’ for wildlife. Although this argument may hold in open systems within which protected areas occur and where, at least, wildlife may freely move beyond the boundary of the conserved area, it may not hold for areas that are fenced, as is predominantly the case in South Africa, in a manner that limits the movement of species responding to climate change. In such circumstances, the recommendation is to physically relocate climate change-displaced species to areas of more suitable habitat, or establish biodiversity or wildlife corridors that are abundant in the scientific literature (Davidson et al. 2012; Di Minin et al. 2013; Groves et al. 2012; Hartter, Goldman & Southworth 2011; Lister et al. 2015; Madden 2008; McDowell 2013; Minteer & Collins 2010; Pittiglio et al. 2014; Sax, Smith & Thompson 2009; Schwartz et al. 2012; Songhurst et al. 2016; Syombua 2013; Treves 2009; Wilke & Rannow 2014). Although this argument is sound from many perspectives, there are a number of social, economic, conservation, legal and practical challenges that may need to be overcome before a species can be either extracted and re-introduced elsewhere, or stable and effective corridors can be established.","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81025034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Using palaeoecology to explore the resilience of southern African savannas","authors":"L. Gillson, Anneli Ekblom","doi":"10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1576","url":null,"abstract":"Savannas are dynamic and heterogeneous environments with highly variable vegetation that responds to a multitude of interacting drivers. Rainfall, soils, herbivory, fire and land use all effect lan ...","PeriodicalId":48892,"journal":{"name":"Koedoe","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83547888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}