So, got a request to give a clue as to what I am actually doing over on this side of the world. Considering our truck crapped out again and I have that odd spare moment that is becoming too frequent I figured to oblige the request.

In a nut shell, I am interested in the relative influences of human activities and climate variability on land-cover change. Specifically, I am looking at land-cover changes in a savanna ecosystem which is comprised of a mixture of grass, tree, and shrub. The amount of each type varies greatly across the landscape and remains in a constant flux.

Short History - Namibia gained its independence from South Africa in 1990. The Caprivi region of Namibia (the finger that sticks out to the East on a map) is the most undeveloped part of the country due to a history of regional conflict, warfare, and apartheid. Since 1990, though, things have started to develop in this region with a large focus on community conservation initiatives - especially regarding wildlife. In southern Africa the land has largely been divided into private farms and communal areas. In the past, private farms have been able to benefit from the natural resources on their lands including wildlife but people in communal areas did not have such rights. This changed in Namibia in 1996 with new legislation that gave the rights of wildlife to people on communal lands. Thus, community-based natural resource management began to take off where communities became much more conscious of the monetary benefits that could be gained from the resources on the land. This is also important from a conservation perspective because many of these communal areas buttress up against protected lands (National parks, state reserves, etc) and rather than people viewing wildlife as a threat, it is viewed more as an asset which works well considering the wildlife do not pay attention to human boundaries.

So, with all that, my research looks at the decisions people make on how they use their land, how that has changed over time, and how those land-use decisions, coupled with rainfall patterns over the past 70 or so odd years, create current landscape patterns across an area that includes communal lands and protected areas. The work hopefully will be useful for the collaborative management between protected areas and communal lands for land-use zonation especially in the areas where people are more prevalent and focused on finding a balance b/t uses of water, wildlife, cattle, agriculture, and settlement.

And maybe at the end of it all I’ll have a degree to show for it. That is, of course, assuming the truck starts tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under Africa 08. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.