Index of /depts/fitzpatrick/docs - Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African ...

iotic communities across South Africa. A framework aimed atunderstanding and predicting community responses to thesedestructive processes is still lacking within southern Africa. Heproposed to analyse the landscape ecological dynamics of aregion both spatially and temporally to facilitate integratedbiodiversity management. Land-use will be a pivotalconservation issue in southern Africa in the coming decades aswe tackle the management of land that has not been set asidein parks and reserves but adds to the regional conservationgoals and protected area networks. During his tenure, Deanhas been involved projects on the following topics:• Spatial dynamics of Karoo endemic and nomadic birds.• Ecological correlates of cooperative breeding in SouthAfrican birds under anthropogenic landscape pressures (incollaboration with Prof. Morné du Plessis).• The effects of space, climate and landscape attributes onthe abundance and distribution of range-restricted andendemic birds of arid western South Africa.• Regional land-use impacts affecting avian diversitypatterns in southern Africa.• Relationships of four endemic fynbos nectar feeding birdsto the phenology of proteoid plant species andanthropogenic land-use structure.• Wine and conservation: the impact of viticulture expansionin the Cape Floristic region (in collaboration with staff atthe Cape Conservation Unit, Botanical Society of SA).• Examination of the ecosystem processes for the protectionof Cape lowland vegetation (in collaboration with staff atthe Cape Conservation Unit, Botanical Society of SA).• Patterns of distribution of Zimbabwean birds - implicationsfor a land-reform process.• Vegetation ecosystem processes: modelling the vegetationcharacteristics of South Africa for input into faunaldistribution and abundance studies (in collaboration withworkers at the University of Idaho, USA).• Savanna rangeland spatial-temporal fire dynamics inrelationship to management and biodiversity maintenance(in collaboration with workers at the University of Idahoand Madikwe Game Reserve).• Measurement and monitoring potential of coarse scalemult-temporal NDVI for species richness patterns in plants(with a collaborator at the Desert Research Institute,Nevada, USA).During the review period, Dean lectured and held discussionson landscape ecology and conservation planning, geographicinformation systems, and remote sensing for the ConservationBiology MSc course, co-supervised four MSc thesis projects,helped to source data and information for research projects tobe conducted at the Institute by incoming CB MSc students in2002, and authored or co-authored five scientific papers and abook chapter.30 Percy FitzPatrick Institute Annual Report: July 2002 - June 2003