Reports from the Veld

GIS Mapping Programme

This page was last updated on 5 December 2023

Helping us all to see the bigger picture

At the last AGM, a proposal and budget were submitted for the development of a GIS (Geographic Information System) system for the CRR. If the GSA is to ever come to grips with the enormous task of managing biodiversity of the CRR effectively, it is imperative to record what happens on the ground, whether it is controlling alien invader species, understanding environmental crime or giving consideration to development applications.

Since the AGM, we have made great strides in structuring our GIS database, thanks to Sifiso Makoko, a third year TUT Environmental Sciences student who is doing his work integrated learning programme at the CRR, ably mentored by Frank Mohlele, who holds an honours degree in Geography, specialising in GIS systems. They have restructured all the geo-spatial data we collected during the creation of our Management Plan and supplemented it with cadastral data as well as data from SANBI, DFFE and USGS (United States Geological Survey).

Our next steps are to firstly acquire more data such as delineating the wetlands within the CRR, as well as adding data on waging war on Invasive plants on an ongoing basis. Secondly, in an effort to make the GIS data accessible and easy to update, we will implement EarthRanger, a software package that will allow us to enter and extract data easily in a user-friendly format.