Addo

A lot has happened since I landed in Port Elizabeth and made my last two posts. I’ll give several posts summarizing some of what I’ve been up to.

The reason I came to Port Elizabeth rather than just going to Botswana was to meet with officials from South African National Parks (SANParks) and researchers from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) to discuss starting a new project based in Addo Elephant National Park, about an hour outside of Port Elizabeth. Greg Kiker, a professor from UF who does modeling of park management issues has facilitated an opportunity for myself and Jessica Steele, another PhD student in my department, to look at elephant movement patterns and the vegetation change that results from elephant impacts. Jessica is most interested in using satellite remote sensing to assess changes in vegetation over space and time while I will use GPS collar data from the Addo elephants do look at how their movements relate to the patterns of vegetation change that she finds.

The meetings have been very productive. There has been general excitement about the projects we are proposing and their usefulness to enhance park management. One thing that has been a little bit tricky is ensuring that our research does not conflict with projects already planned by the NMMU crew. This mainly relates to my work as they do not have any modelers or remote sensors but do have some plans to work with the GPS collar data. I think it will work out fine, however, as long as I confine my analyses to relating to the remote sensing work Jessica is doing.

One of my favorite things about setting this new project in motion is the opportunity to explore a new park. Addo is fairly small compared to Chobe National Park in Botswana, where I do most of my research; if you were determined you could probably make it from the north gate to the south gate in a little over an hour. The nice thing about that is that even though we’ve only visited the park three times, we have driven pretty much all of the generally accessible roads and gotten to see a substantial part of the park.

Addo is beautiful! The Eastern Cape has a Mediterranean climate, much like that of southern California and so the bush is very different from that in Botswana. Instead of a savanna dominated by trees and grass, Addo is dominated by thicket comprised of a number of succulents (plants like aloes and cactus). It has a tremendous amount of plant biodiversity, which is why there are concerns about the negative impacts elephants might be having. There are also a good variety of animals in the park, including all of the Big 5. Some of the highlights we’ve seen include a jackal hunting for mice, male kudu sparring with their horns, and a caracal, an elusive cat that I’ve never seen before!

Thanks to the many helpful people we’ve met from NMMU and SANParks, our meetings are over and we have a wealth of GIS, remote sensing, and GPS collar data to analyze. I look forward to seeing where this project will take me!