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Implementing Enterprise GIS at South African National Parks

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Implementing Enterprise GIS at South African National Parks GIS technical Implementing Enterprise GIS at South African National Parks by Aubrey Kekana, Manager Corporate GIS, SANParks South African National Parks (SANParks) is a premier conservation agency managing a system of 21 national parks, responsible for conserving the natural and cultural biodiversity of the country, covering a total area of about 4 million hectares. The parks are located in eight of the nine provinces; with only KwaZulu Natal having no SANParks run national park. ANParks is a schedule 3(a) public entity established in terms of the National Parks Act 57 of 1976, and Saccording to the Public Finance Management Act, SANParks is partly funded for its operations from the National Revenue Fund, and thus accountable to Parliament. Our business architecture is founded on three equally important core pillars: • Conservation: wildlife and ecosystems conserved through a system of national parks. • People and conservation: interaction with communities living in and around the parks, building constituencies through environmental education and interpretation of the culture, archaeology and history associated with the parks. • Ecotourism: promotion of South Africa’s ecotourism business, targeted at both the international and Fig. 2: An assesment of the domestic tourism markets. Revenues generated from risk of spread of invasive tourism activities are used to fund the other two pillars’ alien species in the Kruger budgetary requirements. National Park (darker areas represent a high level of The vision of the SANParks is to be the pride and joy of all threat). South Africans and of the world. While the mission of the organisation is to develop and manage a system of national What role does GIS play at SANParks? parks that represents the biodiversity, landscapes and associated heritage assets of South Africa for the sustainable The Kruger National Park has been in the forefront of use and benefit for all. using GIS in its operations for a number of years now. The GIS Lab, situated at Skukuza, exists mainly to serve the Scientific Services Division at the Kruger National Park (KNP). The GIS Lab continues to provide access to specialised GIS and Remote Sensing software, hardware, data and literature, as well as in-house expertise to resident and visiting scientists. The objectives for the establishment of the GIS Lab include: • Production, maintenance, and analysis of KNP geospatial data • To conduct research in the field of GIS and Remote Sensing in order to help understand and manage the KNP • To provide core, subject specific support through technically subject related enabling functions • To facilitate long-term preservation and availability of scientific data and information and promote sharing, analysis and use of this data • To provide a facility with good hardware and cutting edge Fig. 1: High and low density areas GIS/RS software for staff and researchers; and identified for Kruger National Park • Generating GIS awareness elephants (darker areas represent high densities). Applications of GIS at KNP include, but are not limited to: 44 PositionIT - March/April 2007 GIS technical Fire decision support Traditionally fire mapping in the KNP was done using rangers’ reports in conjunction with topographic maps to establish fire boundaries. However, the availability of space borne sensors such as MODIS (Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) has offered more reliable alternatives for the mapping of these fire scars. (See Fig. 3). The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in collaboration with the University of Maryland (http://rapidfire.csi.gsfc.nasa.gov), provides real-time image subsets of MODIS for the KNP twice a day. The images are classified into areas which have burnt and those which have not, by using fire scar coordinates (obtained from field rangers) and active fire locations (detected by the WebFire Mapper). Image classification commences at the onset of the fire season in June and is repeated every month Fig. 3: Mapping of fire scars in the Kruger National Park. until November in order to capture the temporal changes in fire scars. KNP is therefore able to map fire scars at least once a Animal distribution month during the fire season. This information is available to KNP managers for the calculation of fire frequency and The power of a GIS lies in its ability to visualise spatial percentage area burnt. Read more from www.sanparks.org/ relationships. Using GIS we are able to do just that with KNP annual aerial elephant survey data. These data, parks/kruger/conservation/scientific/gis/remotesensing.php. which include population numbers and structure, are used CyberTracker to investigate the dry season distribution and density of elephants in the KNP. Spatial and density dependant analysis The CyberTracker (CT) system was developed for of elephant numbers was conducted using data which has conservation by Louis Liebenberg as a user-friendly interface been collected over a period of 20 years (1985-2004) at a for handheld computers (www.cybertracker.org). The system park-wide scale. Fig. 1 indicates the naturally occurring high allows literate as well as non-literate field workers to record and low density areas identified for KNP elephants (darker customised observations with latitude (lat) and longitude areas represent high densities). (long) coordinates. (See Fig. 4). Fig. 1 also illustrates the naturally occurring “hotspots” for Field rangers from each of the 22 sections of the KNP are both bull and elephant herd groups. The third map in the Fig. 1 series indicates the difference in distribution and deployed with CT units on a daily basis to patrol selected density patterns between the groups, i.e. the yellow areas areas (+- 220 rangers and 110 units covering almost 2- have equal densities of both bull and herd groups, while million hectares). The following lat/long observations are the blue areas indicate higher densities of bull groups and recorded using a KNP-customised, icon-based interface with similarly the pink areas higher density of herd groups. These English and Shangaan descriptions: GIS results will subsequently form part of the development • Daily field ranger patrol of a KNP Elephant Management Policy. • Species distribution Invasive species • Location of important spoor Invasive alien species are regarded as the second greatest • Available surface water threat to global biodiversity by scientists worldwide • Location of diseased/injured animals and associated causes (IUCN, 1997), second only to habitat degradation and fragmentation. Since KNP is a conservation area, it is not subjected to fragmentation or degradation. It therefore stands to reason that the number one threat facing KNP biodiversity conservation is that of invasive alien species. Furthermore, all protected areas are becoming increasingly isolated, with river corridors forming one of the most important links to the surrounding landscape. Unfortunately these corridors are also conduits for invasion of alien species. KNP is no exception, facing increasing pressure from alien species in neighbouring watersheds. Using GIS, an assessment of the risk of spread (see Fig. 2) assists managers in identifying areas requiring proactive intervention. The spatial arrangement of KNP invasive species is of primary concern to managers in order to locate possible foci of propagules. GIS analysis interrogates species Fig. 4: CyberTracker system with user friendly distribution and abundance patterns, providing the means to interface used for field data collection in the assess areas of concern. Kruger National Park. PositionIT - March/April 2007 45 GIS technical Fig. 5: Land use/cover in the Garden Route National Park. • Location and cause of game deaths Tsitsikamma National Park, the former DWAF forests and • Location of all poaching activities fynbos, some land from CapeNature, as well as the land that • Fence line breakages and repairs forestry company Safcol, will exit and hand over to SANParks. The total area under management is a little over 200 000 ha. • Elephant utilisation of trees Most of the missing spatial data was digitised and integrated • Distribution of invasive species into the GIS, besides the GIS that was inherited from DWAF. • Fire mapping The GIS unit in the Garden Route has collected both vector and • Collaborative research projects raster datasets that pertain to the GRNP. These include land This system has proven to be an indispensable tool for field use, land cover, roads, rivers, and vegetation. Attributes include data collection in the KNP. The research stemming from these land ownership, management class, and forest type, amongst data is fed into the KNP’s adaptive management programme. others. The rivers, roads and trails data sets cover the whole Visitors can view CT species distribution as downloadable park and the attributes of the rivers data set include road class, sightings maps and GPS waypoints from our website: management per year, etc. (see Fig. 5). www.sanparks.org/parks/kruger/sightings and read more about this exciting project. Other prominent vector data sets include cultural resources, localities, facilities (mainly recreation), buildings and Data management infrastructure. Many national data sets are used as backdrops Good information management practices are essential if KNP for easy visualisation, e.g. roads, rivers, geology, cadastre, science is to be a success in the longer term. Scientific Services towns, and place names. National raster datasets that are strives to stimulate awareness of
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