The Square Kilometre Array is situated near the town of Carnarvon, in the central part of South Africa known as the Bushmanland, within the Nama Karoo Biome. This area is largely unstudied and thus very little is known of the biotic and abiotic elements present in the landscape. As a result, even less is known about how these biotic and abiotic elements would respond to future changes in land-use and environmental conditions in the Nama Karoo. SAEON is collaborating with the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) and South African National Parks (SANParks) to undertake long-term environmental research on the NRF property on which the SKA is being developed.
The SKA core area comprises about 135 000 ha, and all livestock for production such as sheep have been removed. This essentially means that around 13 000 ewes no longer graze the land. Furthermore, the area is now managed by SANParks as a conservation area. From a long-term scientific viewpoint, the livestock removal presents an ideal opportunity to document the effects of livestock grazing exclusion across a very large area. In time this area could provide critical control or baseline conditions to relate to neighbouring farm management, and so improve commodity production and conservation planning for the biome in general.
Since SAEON’s initial involvement at SKA in 2014 various research projects have been initiated these include:
- A long-term study of four quiver tree (Aloidendron dichotomum) forests (Van der Merwe and Geldenhuys (2017), Musengi and Van der Merwe (2022))
- An SKA baseline report was compiled DOI: https://doi.org/10.15493/saeon.arid.10000001
- A vegetation map of the original two properties on which KAT and MeerKat were developed was published (Van der Merwe, 2020)
- A vegetation classification and map of the entire NRF property and a 5km buffer around the property was produced
- Baseline vegetation surveys have continued to be established across the property and on adjacent farmland.
