Goegap Nature Reserve is a provincial nature reserve (36 960 ha) located south east of Springbok in the Northern Cape Province. It falls within the Succulent Karoo Biome. The first long term line transects (descending point method) were established in 1974, followed by the establishment of numerous additional transects in the 1990’s and 2000 – 2020’s as the reserve expanded. The initial purpose of the surveys was to monitor vegetation change after the land use changed (from livestock farming to protected area), however it is now used to monitor the impact of wildlife grazing on vegetation over time. SAEON, together with the Northern Cape Department: Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform and the University of Pretoria, conduct field surveys annually to monitor vegetation change over time. The most recent paper (Geldenhuys et al. 2023) investigated the effect of a prolonged drought and initial high grazing pressure on range condition, perennial vegetation cover, life form cover, vegetation composition and vegetation diversity at five monitoring sites in the reserve.
The key findings were:
- The response of the rocky mountainous vegetation to drought and grazing differed from the response of the sandy plains vegetation. Extent of the change was less in mountainous habitats indicating a potentially higher resilience than in the plains habitats, though grazing pressure was lower in the mountains than on the plains over the study period
- Perennial vegetation cover and range condition reduced dramatically at all sites in all habitats as the drought continued, although the extent of deterioration was less in the mountainous habitats
- Annual vegetation cover was highly variable and associated with inter-annual rainfall variability.
(Photo: Noel Van Rooyen)
