35 research outputs found
The effect of habitat alteration by elephants on invertebrate diversity in two small reserves in South Africa.
Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.Balancing increasing elephant numbers with biodiversity conservation in small reserves has
become a concern for many protected area managers. Elephants are considered important
agents of disturbance creating heterogeneity and thus contributing to the maintenance of
biodiversity. However elephants also damage vegetation through their destructive feeding
habits, and this has led to pressure to reduce elephant populations in many reserves.
Quantitative data on the impact of elephants on invertebrates, the main component of
biodiversity at the species level, are lacking.
The aim of this project was to assess the effect that habitat alteration by elephants has
on the diversity of selected ground-dwelling invertebrates (ants, centipedes, millipedes,
spiders, scorpions and termites) through the provision of logs and dung as a potential refuge
niche for these invertebrate communities, and to determine the effect of spatial (vegetation
types) and temporal (season and age of dung) variation on the invertebrates using these
refugia. Variation in impacts was considered important because savanna is not homogenous
and the impact of the refugia is likely to be dynamic in terms of seasonal trends in
invertebrate populations, and in terms of changes in the environmental conditions offered by
the refugia.
Elephant impact on vegetation, quantity of refugia (logs and dung) produced and
invertebrate diversity associated with refugia were determined for 115 transects within
Madikwe Game Reserve in the North Western Province, South Africa. Invertebrate
abundance, species richness and diversity were always higher under refugia than in areas
without refugia. Vegetation utilisation, frequency of refugia production and invertebrate
diversity showed strong temporal variation (seasonal); elephant impact and production of logs
were higher in winter than in summer because elephants are more likely to feed on woody
vegetation in winter when grass nutrient levels are low. Invertebrate diversity under the logs
was higher in summer than in winter, and this probably reflected the higher abundance and
diversity of invertebrates that are usually associated with the warmer, wetter summer months.
The effect of adding refugia to three vegetation types on invertebrate diversity was
tested experimentally at Makalali Private Game Reserve in the Limpopo Province, South
Africa. Logs and elephant dung were set out in five plots each measuring 20m x 20m within
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mixed bushveld, riverine and mopane woodland. Significant differences were observed in
invertebrate abundance, species richness and diversity between the refugia and control plots
that lacked refugia and between the three vegetation types sampled. Similarity between
invertebrate communities utilising the different refugia types and between the three different
vegetation types were tested using the Jaccard similarity coefficient. The three vegetation
types shared fewer than 50% of their species, as did the logs, dung and control sites. However
the results obtained do illustrate a higher degree of similarity between the refugia substrates
(logs and dung) than the control sites and between the more heterogeneous vegetation types
(mixed bushveld and riverine) than the mopane veld. This indicated that invertebrate
communities associated with refugia were not uniform, but were influenced by vegetation
type.
An experimental test of temporal changes in invertebrate community composition
illustrated the importance of elephant dung as a microhabitat for different invertebrate groups
over different ages of dung (three days, two, four, 12 and 32 weeks old). Colonisation of the
dung, by dung beetles was immediate but as the microclimate of the dung changed with time,
the new conditions were ideal for other invertebrate taxa. Over a period of eight months, the
change of invertebrate communities utilising the dung included dung beetles, followed by
millipedes and [mally ant and termite communities.
The results of this study illustrated the importance of refugia (logs and dung) produced
by elephants for ground-dwelling invertebrate species in the savanna environment. The extent
of the influence of the refugia varied both spatially and temporally and this should be
considered in future monitoring or in measuring impacts. While further research on a broader
range of organisms and at larger scales is necessary, elephants do have a positive impact on at
least some components of biodiversity, through the process of facilitation of refugia
Orthorectification of helicopter-borne high resolution experimental burn observation from infra red handheld imagers
To pursue the development and validation of coupled fire-atmosphere models, the wildland fire modeling community needs validation data sets with scenarios where fire-induced winds influence fire front behavior, and with high temporal and spatial resolution. Helicopter-borne infrared thermal cameras have the potential to monitor landscape-scale wildland fires at a high resolution during experimental burns. To extract valuable information from those observations, three-step image processing is required: (a) Orthorectification to warp raw images on a fixed coordinate system grid, (b) segmentation to delineate the fire front location out of the orthorectified images, and (c) computation of fire behavior metrics such as the rate of spread from the time-evolving fire front location. This work is dedicated to the first orthorectification step, and presents a series of algorithms that are designed to process handheld helicopter-borne thermal images collected during savannah experimental burns. The novelty in the approach lies on its recursive design, which does not require the presence of fixed ground control points, hence relaxing the constraint on field of view coverage and helping the acquisition of high-frequency observations. For four burns ranging from four to eight hectares, long-wave and mid infra red images were collected at 1 and 3 Hz, respectively, and orthorectified at a high spatial resolution (<1 m) with an absolute accuracy estimated to be lower than 4 m. Subsequent computation of fire radiative power is discussed with comparison to concurrent space-borne measurementsPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Seasonal range fidelity of a megaherbivore in response to environmental change
For large herbivores living in highly dynamic environments, maintaining range fidelity has the potential to facilitate the exploitation of predictable resources while minimising energy expenditure. We evaluate this expectation by examining how the seasonal range fidelity of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Kruger National Park, South Africa is affected by spatiotemporal variation in environmental conditions (vegetation quality, temperature, rainfall, and fire). Eight-years of GPS collar data were used to analyse the similarity in seasonal utilisation distributions for thirteen family groups. Elephants exhibited remarkable consistency in their seasonal range fidelity across the study with rainfall emerging as a key driver of space-use. Within years, high range fidelity from summer to autumn and from autumn to winter was driven by increased rainfall and the retention of high-quality vegetation. Across years, sequential autumn seasons demonstrated the lowest levels of range fidelity due to inter-annual variability in the wet to dry season transition, resulting in unpredictable resource availability. Understanding seasonal space use is important for determining the effects of future variability in environmental conditions on elephant populations, particularly when it comes to management interventions. Indeed, over the coming decades climate change is predicted to drive greater variability in rainfall and elevated temperatures in African savanna ecosystems. The impacts of climate change also present particular challenges for elephants living in fragmented or human-transformed habitats where the opportunity for seasonal range shifts are greatly constrained
Reflecting on research produced after more than 60 years of exclosures in the Kruger National Park
All data, in this case works of literature reviewed have been
summarised in Online Appendix 2.Herbivores are a main driver of ecosystem patterns and processes in semi-arid savannas, with their effects clearly observed when they are excluded from landscapes. Starting in the 1960s, various herbivore exclosures have been erected in the Kruger National Park (KNP), for research and management purposes. These exclosures vary from very small (1 m2) to relatively large (almost 900 ha), from short-term (single growing season) to long-term (e.g. some of the exclosures were erected more than 60 years ago), and are located on different geologies and across a rainfall gradient. We provide a summary of the history and specifications of various exclosures. This is followed by a systematic overview of mostly peer-reviewed literature resulting from using KNP exclosures as research sites. These 75 articles cover research on soils, vegetation dynamics, herbivore exclusion on other faunal groups and disease. We provide general patterns and mechanisms in a synthesis section, and end with recommendations to increase research outputs and productivity for future exclosure experiments. CONSERVATION IMPLICATIONS : Herbivore exclosures in the KNP have become global research platforms, that have helped in the training of ecologists, veterinarians and field biologists, and have provided valuable insights into savanna dynamics that would otherwise have been hard to gain. In an age of dwindling conservation funding, we make the case for the value added by exclosures and make recommendations for their continued use as learning tools in complex African savannas.South African Environment Observation Network (SAEON).http://www.koedoe.co.zaam2023Paraclinical Science
Towards adaptive fire management for biodiversity conservation : experience in South African National Parks
CITATION: Van Wilgen, B. W. et al. 2011. Towards adaptive fire management for biodiversity conservation : experience in South African National Parks. Koedoe, 53(2), Art.
#982, doi:10.4102/koedoe.v53i2.982.The original publication is available at https://koedoe.co.za/index.php/koedoeThis paper reviews the experience gained in three South African national parks (Kruger, Table Mountain and Bontebok) with regard to the adaptive management of fire for the conservation of biodiversity. In the Kruger National Park, adaptive approaches have evolved over the past 15 years, beginning initially as a form of ‘informed trial and error’, but progressing towards active adaptive management in which landscape-scale, experimental burning treatments
are being applied in order to learn. In the process, significant advances in understanding regarding the role and management of fire have been made. Attempts have been made to transfer the approaches developed in Kruger National Park to the other two national parks. However, little progress has been made to date, both because of a failure to provide an agreed context for the introduction of adaptive approaches, and because (in the case of Bontebok
National Park) too little time has passed to be able to make an assessment. Fire management interventions, ultimately, will manifest themselves in terms of biodiversity outcomes, but definite links between fire interventions and biodiversity outcomes have yet to be made. Conservation implications: Significant challenges face the managers of fire-prone and fire adapted ecosystems, where the attainment of ecosystem goals may require approaches (like encouraging high-intensity fires at hot and dry times of the year) that threaten societal goals
related to safety. In addition, approaches to fire management have focused on encouraging particular fire patterns in the absence of a sound understanding of their ecological outcomes. Adaptive management offers a framework for addressing these issues, but will require higher levels of agreement, monitoring and assessment than have been the case to date.Centre of Excellence for Invasion BiologyPublisher's versio
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Woody plant biomass and carbon exchange depend on elephant-fire interactions across a productivity gradient in African savanna
1. Elephants and fire are individually well-known disturbance agents within savanna ecosystems, but their interactive role in governing tree-cover dynamics and savanna–forest biome boundaries remains unresolved. Of central importance are the mechanisms by which elephants vs. fire affect tree biomass and cover, and how – over long time periods – both factors interact with rainfall and soils to govern tree biomass and carbon dynamics. 2. Here, we evaluated the response of woody vegetation to 56 years of fire manipulation in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, with three fire regimes (annual, triennial and unburned) replicated across a productivity gradient and subject to two periods of contrasting elephant abundances (generated by the cessation of culling in 1994). 3. Higher fire frequencies had a negative effect on woody biomass in the low-elephant period, but this effect was weak to negligible in the high-elephant period as the difference among fire treatments diminished. Moreover, elephants removed increasing amounts of woody biomass as productivity increased across study sites, but fire did not. We infer that elephant-induced tree mortality could overcome increases in woody-plant productivity, while fire-induced mortality alone could not. 4. Elephants caused woody-plant carbon to shift from a sink to a source; this effect was independent of fire treatment, with highest rates of net carbon removal in the wettest and most productive site. 5. Synthesis. Our results reveal a context-dependent interaction between fire and elephants as disturbance agents in savanna: the influence of fire on woody plants was sensitive to the abundance of elephants and diminished with increased plant productivity. In contrast, elephants were capable of shifting landscapes from relatively dense woodland to open savanna, even in unburned sites, and exerted strong impacts irrespective of site conditions and plant productivity
Data from: Woody plant biomass and carbon exchange depend on elephant-fire interactions across a productivity gradient in African savanna
Elephants and fire are individually well-known disturbance agents within savanna ecosystems, but their interactive role in governing tree-cover dynamics and savanna–forest biome boundaries remains unresolved. Of central importance are the mechanisms by which elephants vs. fire affect tree biomass and cover, and how – over long time periods – both factors interact with rainfall and soils to govern tree biomass and carbon dynamics.
Here, we evaluated the response of woody vegetation to 56 years of fire manipulation in South Africa's Kruger National Park, with three fire regimes (annual, triennial and unburned) replicated across a productivity gradient and subject to two periods of contrasting elephant abundances (generated by the cessation of culling in 1994).
Higher fire frequencies had a negative effect on woody biomass in the low-elephant period, but this effect was weak to negligible in the high-elephant period as the difference among fire treatments diminished. Moreover, elephants removed increasing amounts of woody biomass as productivity increased across study sites, but fire did not. We infer that elephant-induced tree mortality could overcome increases in woody-plant productivity, while fire-induced mortality alone could not.
Elephants caused woody-plant carbon to shift from a sink to a source; this effect was independent of fire treatment, with highest rates of net carbon removal in the wettest and most productive site.
Synthesis. Our results reveal a context-dependent interaction between fire and elephants as disturbance agents in savanna: the influence of fire on woody plants was sensitive to the abundance of elephants and diminished with increased plant productivity. In contrast, elephants were capable of shifting landscapes from relatively dense woodland to open savanna, even in unburned sites, and exerted strong impacts irrespective of site conditions and plant productivity