SAEON in the media

The following article by Sasha Planting* recently appeared in Financial Mail’s South Africa in 2006 – Your essential guide to the year ahead. SAEON was one of only five initiatives to get a write-up in the Science and Technology section of this definitive publication for 2006.

An eye on our PLANET

Imagine a world in which we can more accurately predict the kinds of changes that shape our lives, whether they are disasters like hurricanes and disease outbreaks or slow trends affecting food production and human settlement.

Sixty countries, the European Commission and more than 40 international organisations are supporting the development of a global Earth Observation System which, over the next decade, will revolutionise our understanding of the Earth.

This understanding will, in turn, provide the scientific basis for policy and decisions.

With benefits as broad as the planet itself, the initiative aims to make people and economies healthier, safer and better equipped to manage basic daily needs.

Over the past two years, SA’s department of science & technology (DST) played a leading role in the development of this initiative and its director-general, Rob Adam, is one of 4 global co-chairs of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO).

SA’s own Earth observation system is taking shape and will be the first of its kind globally. It will link this country’s Earth observations to the international system.

“Our understanding of the Earth system — its weather, oceans, atmosphere, ecosystems and hazards — is crucial to enhancing human welfare, protecting the environment, reducing disaster losses and achieving sustainable development," says Johan Pauw, head of the SA Environmental Observation Network (SAEON), which has been proposed to execute SA’s Earth Observation system.

Sound management of the Earth system, in both its natural and human aspects, requires information that is reliable, long-term and global. The availability of this information leaves much to be desired, however. Co-ordination and data sharing between countries and institutions is poor and there are large gaps in data coverage. To make matters worse, the observational infrastructure is deteriorating, long-term data archiving is inadequate, and continuity is not assured for many essential observing systems.

SA is no different. Research systems are often dominated by short-term studies under the pressures of career development and postgraduate qualifications to provide quick results. Generalisations resulting from short-term studies are high-risk inputs into policy development processes because of the complexity and dynamism of the ecosystems. And environmental research is too often based on too few species and too small a spatial scale, yielding results of limited value.

To redress this, SAEON was put in place in 2002 to co-ordinate long-term monitoring of different environments and to determine the impact of changes on SA's human society.

Last year the network launched its first observation point, the Ndlovu Node at Phalaborwa. This area, hosted by SA National Parks, covers the savannah region.

Three new nodes are to be developed within the next year: a fynbos node, which will include the unique Cape floral kingdom, the coastal-inshore node and the offshore node. Various institutions are supporting this process, each in its own niche. fire

“There is so much that we speculate about, that co-ordinated and long-term monitoring could help us unravel,” says Pauw. “For instance, what is driving the densification of the bushveld in parts of Mpumalanga and Limpopo? We know that 100 years ago the bush was very open, yet today parts are so dense you cannot see through it. Is this a local or global influence? Does it have anything to do with a no-burning policy? Does overgrazing make the grass less competitive, allowing the bush to grow through? Does it have anything to do with increased levels of CO2? Or could it have something to do with the absence of elephants and black rhino? The absence of long-term data makes it difficult to explain this and then chart a way forward.”

SA scientists and research institutes are not working alone. “Regional scientific collaboration is crucial for addressing politically sensitive issues such as water management in the Limpopo, Orange or Zambezi systems; elephant population management; control of alien invasive species; transboundary conservation area management; and biodiversity dynamics in Southern Africa,” he says.

Given that eco-informatics is a new science globally, SAEON has had to rely on its own resources to develop SA’s eco-data management system. “We expect it to be up and running in 2007, and it will be cutting-edge,” says Pauw. All the nodes and the national office in Pretoria will link to this, and in turn they will link into international Earth observation systems with the aim of providing information freely to users.

The success of the venture in SA depends on people skilled in ecological data and network management, and international experts will supplement local skills.

For now, the Ndlovu Node will serve as the testing ground for the new system.

As ecosystem understanding is gained through this network, information will be made available to be fed into new policies and strategies for environmental stewardship. Specifically, these plans will try to deal with changing Earth and environmental systems, which are being forced into unprecedented behaviour by global climate change and local human interference.

Better understanding of the water cycle, for example, will improve integrated water resource management.

“This system is an investment for future generations,” says Pauw. “The foundations we are laying will serve the Earth in decades to come.”

* Sasha Planting heads up Financial Mail Innovations.