Determining the conservation value of land in Mpumalanga April 2002 Prepared for DWAF/DFID STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT Prepared by A.J. Emery, M. Lötter and S.D. Williamson Mpumalanga Parks Board Private Bag X11338 Nelspruit 1200
[email protected] Executive Summary This report is aimed at identifying areas of biodiversity importance within Mpumalanga through the use of existing data and expert knowledge, and the development of species and Geographic Information System (GIS) databases. This study adopted a similar approach to that developed by the Kwa-zulu Natal Nature Conservation Services in their report “Determining the conservation value of land in KwaZulu-Natal”. The approach was based on the broad Keystone Centre (1991) definition of biodiversity (the variety of life and its processes), and therefore analysed the complete biodiversity hierarchy excluding the genetic level. The hierarchy included landscapes, three well-defined communities, one floristic region, one broad vegetation community and eight broad species groups (Figure 1.1). The species groups included threatened plants, economically important medicinal plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish and invertebrates. Species data and GIS coverages were obtained from a wide variety of sources. Digital coverages of two detailed vegetation communities, wetlands and forest, were compiled from all available sources. Special effort was made to map additional forests and wetlands that had not previously been mapped. Acocks Veld Types and Centres and Regions of Plant Endemism (Phytochoria) were used to define the broad plant communities. The species data were compiled from published papers, private and public collections in herbaria and museums, personal observations and MPB records. The resulting species databases afforded the MPB the opportunity to capture all its species records in databases, which in turn were used to investigate the various species layers.