South Africa says: No Fracking Way!

There has been recent outrage in South Africa about plans by Shell to extract large gas reserves in South Africa's Karoo region (see e.g. this link). The Karoo is the semi-arid central basin that occupies a large proportion of South Africa's area. It is not one of the country's best-known areas; however, it is THE place to see the African starry night, catch a breath of fresh air and view the aardwolf and bat-eared fox roam. Due to the dry climate of the region, communities and agriculture in this region are largely dependent on ground water reserves for their needs. However, it is feared that 'fracking', the method proposed for extracting the gas, may contaminate the precious water supplies of the region. As a matter of fact, according to the above article, "a moratorium on the gas-extraction technique has been imposed by at least 160 communities in the US, as well as in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canada's Quebec province" due to its polluting potential.

I find it very concerning that obvious irregularities have characterized the mandatory environmental impact assessment (EIA) and public involvement processes of Shell's application. Once again, it appears that money has been used to bypass the environmental laws in South Africa. Mining companies are prospecting across the country, and have tried, and in some cases, succeeded in destroying (sometimes illegally) some of South Africa's most sensitive ecosystems and historical sites. And, in many cases, the Department of Mineral Affairs is allowing them to mine despite sensitive ecosystems, incomplete EIAs, potential dangers to the peoples of the region. However, NO exceptions should be permitted - stick to the laws, enforce the laws! They are there for a GOOD reason - to protect our history, our people, our resources beyond the 30 year life span of mines!

MaxEnt - made understandable

I read the recent paper by Elith et al. 2011 (appropriately titled "A statistical explanation of MaxEnt for ecologists") this weekend. MaxEnt has frequently been called a 'Black Box', and sometimes been criticized on this account, although it has been shown to perform as one of the best species distribution modelling techniques currently available. Elith and colleagues have done a great job of providing users of the software with a 'candle' to shed some light into the black box of MaxEnt. Several useful features have also been added to the MaxEnt interface, giving users greater control of several features, such as the background points that can be selected. This paper will be a good guideline for all MaxEnt users.

The potential of herbarium specimens

My undergrad training was very ecology-oriented (and zoological.) I therefore never visited a herbarium during my undergrad training, and never realized what its purpose was. Having now spent several months going through herbarium records - and databases of such records - I have realized what a wealth of information is stored in these collections. Not only are plant specimens conserved here, where they can always be revisited, but there is a wealth of information on herbarium labels that can be used for a variety of purposes. Indeed, Pyke et al. (2010) have shown that herbarium specimens have increasingly been utilized by the scientific community in recent years, and new uses for them are continuously being found. I am becoming an ever greater advocate of conserving these institutions, their data, and the continued existence of the field of taxonomy, which is essential for the basic purpose of describing and identifying species, the biological entities most frequently used in describing diversity and making conservation recommendations.

Pyke, G.H. & Ehrlich, P.R. (2010) Biological collections and ecological/environmental research: A review, some observations and a look to the future. Biological Reviews, 85, 247-266

IBS Conference - more than good food and raki!

I again had the privilege of attending the conference of the International Biogeography Society, this time in Crete, in January, 2011. This was my third IBS conference, and I found it especially interesting to observe how the field of biogeography has been advancing, and how the ideas that were presented at the previous conference have been explored in greater depth, and deeper insights into these topics have been gained. I particularly enjoyed the "Biogeography and Ecology: Two Lenses in One Telescope" seesion. The speakers attempted to bring community and macroecology together and the highlighted challenges herein. What also came out at the conference was the fact that the use of phylogenetic methods have become invaluable in advancing our understanding of biogeographic processes and patterns by also taking evolutionary processes into account, though these methods hold their own challenges, as they are often based on their own assumptions. I look forward to seeing what progress will have been made on these topics when the next conference takes place in Miami in 2013.

Forest Reserve - going, going, gone?

Yesterday, I came across the satellite image of Mucheve Forest Reserve in Mozambique. The boundaries of this park are clearly visible from space - due to the heavy degradation WITHIN its borders! It really is a sad sight to see - it appears that little of the forest remains.

I have been attending the final conference of the SUN (Sustainable Use of Natural Vegetation in West Africa) Project in Benin. This EU-funded project has been a collaboration between partners from four West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal) and two European countries (Denmark and Germany) and spans several disciplines. It has been great to see how the partners from different countries and different disciplines have been collaborating across country and disciplinary borders, and how this is has strengthened the science that has been produced. It can confidently be said that everyone who has taken an active involvement in the project has gained a great deal of from it.

Inevitably, this has made me think about South African science in a continental context. I know that there are some efforts from within South Africa to work within a greater African framework (and I don't just mean "doing research in another country", but actively collaborating), but it is not common. (In fact, I have heard several non-African scientists working in Africa make tongue-in-cheek remarks about how the understanding of "how the environment works" of South African scientists seems to stop at the country's borders.) Sadly, I have also heard African scientists commenting about how they are treated with some inferiority by some (and I by no means want to imply all) of their South African peers. Whether this is a result of South Africa's history, because of the ignorance of South Africans about the rest of Africa (which, admittedly, is still a dark continent to many of us) or because of the attitude of a country that considers itself to be the most developed amongst its African counterparts, this is a great shame. I increasingly realise how South African science could be strengthened by the expertise of its neighbours, and how it could also contribute to the advancement of science in other African nations. Perhaps it's the "we have to prove that we can compete on an international level" attitude of South Africans, but possibly also the source of much funding in the country (often from within the country) which have prevented much collaboration of biologists across its borders. It would be great if South Africans research would look not only at its far-northern, but also its closer northern counterparts in seeking out collaborative ventures.

Reflections

Today I am finishing off my two-month stint at Kew Herbarium, where I databased herbarium specimens of African acacias. This will form part of a project modelling the distribution of the group across the entire continent. I have been lucky enough to have received data from several other sources, which will allow me to conduct a thorough assessmnet of this widespread group across the entire continent. All in all it has been a productive time, which involved me going through virtually all of the herbarium's collections for Acacia (and some of those of the Natural History Museum). On Sunday I fly on to Portugal to supplement my data with material from Coimbra and Lisbon herbaria to fill some of the geographical gaps in the existing material I have. And then, in the not too distant future, I hope that the data will be in a workable format so that I can start running some meaningful analyses.