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The Coupled land, water and marine ecosystems theme focuses on ecological structure and function in linked terrestrial, freshwater and marine systems, and their relationship to functional biodiversity and to ecosystem services. The emphasis is on ecosystems that are occupied and used by people to support their needs, rather than primarily on ecosystem in a pristine state.
The research theme is explicitly spatial and temporal, since it is centrally concerned with the linkages between different ecosystem facets: land and atmosphere, land and freshwater, freshwater and coastal, ocean and atmosphere, paying attention to scaling in space and time by making extensive use of techniques of earth observation and dynamical modelling.
The theme encompasses a number of dedicated research groups. These are:
- Biodiversity and ecosystem services: Research includes conservation planning, integration of biodiversity (the variety of life: its condition, conservation and links to human wellbeing), mapping and planning for ecosystem services.
- Earth observation: This group provides solutions for environmental applications and research by establishing robust technology and integrative (cross-disciplinary) platforms.
- Ecophysiology: The key issues are the availability of the water resource for rain-fed forestry and agriculture, and water use efficiency.
- Ecosystem processes and dynamics: Research focuses on understanding the behaviour of relatively complex ecological systems (including those influenced by people), especially in the general area of 'global change' or 'earth systems'.
- Coastal systems: The group provides an in-depth scientific understanding of the manner in which global change propagates through the land-water-ocean system, the focus being on the coastal ecosystems that lie at the interface between land and ocean ecosystems and the ecosystem services provided by these coastal systems.
- Coastal and marine pollution:
Research is aimed at providing a rational basis for conserving, and managing coastal and marine resources and supports a need to maintain a sustainable balance between social, economic and environmental drivers.
- Ocean systems and climate:
The Ocean systems and climate group is interested in understanding how and why CO2 and oxygen are changing in the thermocline waters of the South East Atlantic and Southern Oceans. These changes are important not only in respect of constraining the rate of global warming but also as indicators of the rate and the way the regional system is adjusting to climate change.
Current research projects in this research theme are:
Linking biodiversity and ecosystem services,
Global change,
RECEAD,
Cholera,
Land quality,
Ecosystem service benefit flows,
ECO3,
PDP data integration, modelling and analysis,
GEOBENE,
CarboAfrica and
RE-Impact.
The last three projects are European Union (EU) funded.
The key skills in the CSIR in the area of ecosystem dynamics include a detailed, process-based understanding of several major ecosystems, including savannas, forests, fynbos, rivers and estuaries and coastal upwelling systems; modelling and mathematical skills that allow for the representation and analysis of systems; and paleo-ecological observation capacities related to isotope analysis. The CSIR has a track record in the study of the structural and compositional components of biodiversity, the implications of global change and options for management. This research includes the development and application of spatial technologies, analysis and geomatics, as well as research and development in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and earth observation, and their application in a number of research fields.
The group’s overall desired outcome, by 2010, is to have significantly capability to predict the consequences of a range of human actions on the persistence of biodiversity, in both type and abundance, and the level of delivery of ecosystem services from major Southern African ecosystems. It also aims to have influenced the policy process in South Africa towards sustainable and resilient solutions to important ecological problems.
National and international stakeholders within the Coupled land, water and marine ecosystems research theme are given below, each with its specific area of strategic synergy:
- SANBI: Biodiversity, ecosystem services, global change research
- WRC: Freshwater biodiversity research
- MCM: Marine and estuarine ecosystems science and management, and coastal zone management
- University of Stellenbosch: Associates, graduate students and joint projects
- University of Kwazulu-Natal: Associates, graduate students and joint projects
- University of Cape Town: Associates, graduate students and joint projects
- University of Witwatersrand: Associates, graduate students and joint projects
- SAEON: Long data series and data networks
- Earth Institute ACCESS: Advanced large scale Earth systems analysis
- TIGER: EU-supported remote sensing and hydrological research
- MNP (Netherlands): Biodiversity & ecosystem services research
- IIASA (Austria): Valuation of ecosystem services
- WWF: Ecosystem service mapping and inclusion into conservation plans
- Stanford: Ecosystem service mapping and inclusion into conservation plans
- NCEAS: Ecosystem service mapping and inclusion into conservation plans
- University of Cambridge ecosystem services programs: Ecosystem service mapping and inclusion into conservation plans
- NREL (Colorado, USA): Ecosystem modeling, carbon cycle, regional atmospheric transport models
- NOAA-GFDL: Operational Modeling
- IRD (France): Ocean and ecosystem modeling capacity building
- Princeton (USA): Ocean biogeochemistry and paleo-climate
- Bjerkings Climate Change Research Center (Norway): Ocean and ecosystem modeling capacity building
- CSIRO (Australia): Tropical and Temperate Marine and estuarine ecosystems and climate change
Theme convenor: Dr Bob Scholes
Management and technical enquiries: Carmel Mbvizo
Communication and media: Renatè Janse van Vuuren
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