Using Digital Soil Mapping to Create Spatial Off-Road Driving Guidelines and Optimal Road Networks in the Phinda Reserve

Protected areas are often thought of as pristine natural environments. Practically however, protected areas are often degraded. In Africa, protected areas are mostly funded through game viewing tourism, where development of the road network to enable game viewing often leads to land degradation. Furthermore, off-road driving is common in such game parks, leading to soil compaction and crusting. Guidelines for sustainable road network development and off-road driving exist but are impossible to apply without a soil map of the game reserve. This paper shows how a digital soil map can be used to create spatial off-road driving guidelines for the Phinda Game Reserve in South Africa. Phinda has a very high road density and therefore an additional aim was to designate roads for closure and rehabilitation, without decreasing the opportunity to view predators. A soil class map with a Kappa value of 0.8 was created using the multinomial logistic regression algorithm and 133 soil observations. A soil sensitivity rating was assigned to each soil class based on the soil properties of the class. The off-driving guideline map showed that off-road driving should be prohibited on 6.7% of the area and can only be practised on 41% of the area when not bare or overgrazed. Using the soil sensitivity map and the locations of accommodation camps and predator sighting hotspots, roads were designated for closure and rehabilitation. In total, 207 km of 17% of roads were designated for closure. These roads were outside of predator hotspot areas and would therefore not negatively affect the touristic experience. This paper gives a blueprint to develop spatial off-road driving guidelines and sustainable road network design in game reserves using digital soil mapping and could be applied to similar game parks throughout Africa.