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Spatiotemporal Patterns and Drivers of Surface Water Quality and Landscape Change in a Semi-Arid, Southern African Savanna

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Spatiotemporal Patterns and Drivers of Surface Water Quality and Landscape Change in a Semi-Arid, Southern African Savanna Spatiotemporal Patterns and Drivers of Surface Water Quality and Landscape Change in a Semi-Arid, Southern African Savanna John Tyler Fox Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Fisheries and Wildlife Kathleen A. Alexander Adil N. Godrej Emmanuel A. Frimpong Stephen P. Prisley May 16, 2016 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: (Escherichia coli, fecal indicator bacteria, water quality modeling, microbial fate, pollution, remote sensing, savanna disturbance ecology, land cover change, climate change, fire frequency, water-borne pathogens, wildlife, erosion, dryland rivers, water quality, Africa, ecosystem services) Copyright © 2016 J. Tyler Fox Spatiotemporal Patterns and Drivers of Surface Water Quality and Landscape Change in a Semi-Arid, Southern African Savanna John Tyler Fox Abstract The savannas of southern Africa are a highly variable and globally-important biome supporting rapidly-expanding human populations, along with one of the greatest concentrations of wildlife on the continent. Savannas occupy a fifth of the earth’s land surface, yet despite their ecological and economic significance, understanding of the complex couplings and feedbacks that drive spatiotemporal patterns of change are lacking. In Chapter 1 of my dissertation, I discuss some of the different theoretical frameworks used to understand complex and dynamic changes in savanna structure and composition. In Chapter 2, I evaluate spatial drivers of water quality declines in the Chobe River using spatiotemporal and geostatistical modeling of time series data collected along a transect spanning a mosaic of protected, urban, and developing urban land use. Chapter 3 explores the complex couplings and feedbacks that drive spatiotemporal patterns of land cover (LC) change across the Chobe District, with a particular focus on climate, fire, herbivory, and anthropogenic disturbance. In Chapter 4, I evaluated the utility of Distance sampling methods to: 1) derive seasonal fecal loading estimates in national park and unprotected land; 2) provide a simple, standardized method to estimate riparian fecal loading for use in distributed hydrological water quality models; 3) answer questions about complex drivers and patterns of water quality variability in a semi-arid southern African river system. Together, these findings have important implications to land use planning and water conservation in southern Africa’s dryland river ecosystems. ii Acknowledgements Financial support for my dissertation research was provided by the National Science Foundation, award #1114953, in addition to Forest Conservation Botswana, National Institutes of Health, and the Center for Conservation of African Resources, Animals, Communities, and Land Use (CARACAL). I am also extremely grateful for the support of the Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources and Environment and the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. I am grateful to my committee, Kathleen Alexander, Adil Godrej, Emmanuel Frimpong, and Stephen Prisley for their support, guidance, friendship, and encouragement. I am also deeply indebted to my lab mates, friends, colleagues, and mentors at Virginia Tech and in Botswana for all their assistance and thoughtful conversations without which this project would not have been possible: Claire Sanderson, Mark Vandewalle, Marcella Kelly, Kuruthumu Mwamende, Megan Holcomb, Peter Laver, Robert Sutcliffe, Cisko, Lipa Nkwalele, Rissa Pesapane, Erica Putman, Carol Ann Nichols, Shaun Clemence and Family, Tempe Adams, Dana Morin, Anne Hilborn, Lindsey Rich, Greg Anderson, Alex Silvis, Cathy Jachowski, Chris Sattter, Dan Schilling, Bernardo Mesa, Christine Proctor, Brian Murphy, Bill Hopkins, Jim Parkhurst, and Vic DiCenzo, to name just a few.. A very special thanks as well to Ginny and Reid Adams, Karen Steelman, and Ronald Butler at the University of Maine at Farmington, and to Kim Dickerson at the US Fish and Wildlife Ecological Services branch in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Joe Neuhof, my canyon-loving brother, Chris Martel, Dale and Stephanie Wiken, Ben and Michelle Wynn-Wheeler, and Monique Barrett –I love and miss you all, your friendship continues to inspire me. Also, Spas and Svetla Uzunovi, dear friends and outstanding husband and wife ecologists, my friends and colleagues from Strandja Nature Park, and the Dodovi Family, who keep reminding me that I need to get a “real” job! I would like to thank my mother and father with all of my heart, as well as my brother, and my grandmother, Elizabeth E. Eanes, without whom I would surely have never made it this far and whose presence, dignity, and wisdom continue to guide me along this most wonderful journey. Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank my wife and soul mate, Svetla Dimitrova, for her love and support throughout this entire process of us pursuing our dual doctorates at Virginia Tech and Michigan State; also my daughter and son who gave me strength and kept me centered when things were at their toughest. I love you guys. iii Attribution Below is a brief description of the contributions made by colleagues who assisted with the preparation of manuscripts for the following chapters, and whose contributions rose to the level of co-author for manuscript publication. Chapter 2: Spatiotemporal variation and the role of wildlife in seasonal water quality declines in the Chobe River, Botswana. Kathy Alexander (Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech; CARACAL) provided financial and logistic assistance, and edits to the manuscript. Chapter 3: A multi-temporal remote sensing analysis of land cover change dynamics, recent fire history, and elephant browsing in the semi-arid savanna of northern Botswana. Kathy Alexander (Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech; CARACAL) provided financial and logistic assistance, and edits to the manuscript. Chapter 4: Quantifying wildlife-source contributions to terrestrial and aquatic fecal loadings using a Distance sampling approach Kathy Alexander (Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech; CARACAL) provided financial and logistic assistance, and edits to the manuscript. Marcella Kelly (Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech) provided technical assistance and edits to the manuscript. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Attribution .......................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... x List of Appendices ........................................................................................................... xvi Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Spatiotemporal patterns of surface water quality............................................................ 1 Land cover change in semi-arid southern African savanna ............................................ 2 A Distance sampling approach for estimating seasonal wildlife fecal densities ............ 5 Literature Cited ................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2: Spatiotemporal variation and the role of wildlife in seasonal water quality declines in the Chobe River, Botswana. ........................................................................... 10 Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 10 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 10 Materials and Methods ...................................................................................................... 12 Study Area .................................................................................................................... 12 Chobe River floodplain ................................................................................................. 13 Chobe River transect ..................................................................................................... 14 Water Sample Collection and Analysis ........................................................................ 14 E. coli and total suspended solids ................................................................................. 15 Wildlife biomass and fecal count data .......................................................................... 15 Simultaneous autoregressive (SAR) spatial models ..................................................... 16 Geostatistical Analysis .................................................................................................. 18 Seasonal and trend decomposition using local regression ...........................................
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