Grasslands of the World.pdf - Disasters and Conflicts - UNEP

S.G. REYNOLDS
Grasslands of South Africa 111
Plate 3.7
Grass regrowth after the annual burn in Kwa-Zulu Natal.
homesteads and kraal where they are held overnight. The areas near homesteads
have a lower standing biomass, but are extremely photosynthetically active
and provide short, nutritious grazing during the growing season. However
photosynthetic activity in other components of the landscape and in abandoned
cultivated land is low, suggesting suboptimal production of natural rangeland
(Palmer et al., 2001).
RESEARCH
Range and botanical sciences in South Africa have a very active research
community, with funding and leadership in a number of ministries. The
primary research agency for rangeland is the Agricultural Research Council
(ARC), which supports two institutes dealing with understanding the processes
(Range and Forage Institute – ARC-RFI) and condition assessment (Institute
for Soil Climate and Water – ARC-ISCW) of rangeland. These institutes
receive most of their core funding (approximately R 45 million in 2001)
from the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. They also
receive direct, project-orientated funding from the National Department of
Agriculture and Land Affairs. Research direction is driven largely by the
needs of directorates within the Department, which at present has five primary
programmes: (1) Monitoring; (2) Problem organisms; (3) Rangeland resources ;
(4) Geographical Information Systems (GIS ); and (5) Decision Support Systems
(DSS). In the monitoring programme, research efforts of ARC-RFI and
ARC-ISCW are directed towards resource evaluation using remote sensing
and GIS modelling techniques. There is a strong emphasis on using satellite