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Sue Milton

Sue walking in the perennial Karoo shrubland at tierberg Karoo Research Centre, Prince Albert.

Karoo shrublands

Sue's interest is in plant population ecology, particularly the responses of plant populations to harvesting, grazing and natural disturbance. Since 1976 she has researched the process of invasions by alien invasive trees, effects of harvesting on palm and fern populations, growth responses of Acacia saplings to felling and defoliation, and factors leading to changes in semi-desert Karoo vegetation and in population of shrubs. Most of this research has been in South Africa (Northern and Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Provinces), but she has also carried out field research in Botswana, Namibia, Germany and Inaccessible Island in the South Atlantic. Much of her field-based research has been in collaboration with my ornithologist husband Dr W Richard J Dean (an editor of the new Roberts Birds). Her findings have been incorporated in dynamic vegetation models through collaboration with ecological modelers Dr T Wiegand of the Centre for Environmental Research (Leipzig) and Prof F Jeltsch of the University of Pottsdam, Germany. Over the past five years she has focused her research on ecological restoration on old fields, degraded rangelands and on mines in the Western and Northern Cape Provinces.

Since 1987, Sue and Richard Dean have managed the Tierberg Karoo Research Centre. This long term ecological research site in the arid Karoo near Prince Albert 400 km east of Cape Town is linked to the SAEON (South African Environmental Observatory Network). There is good information on plant, bird and mammal populations and communities at the site, but gaps in understanding of soil processes and invertebrate communities.

Klaus Kellner

One of the favorite occupations of Klaus.

Rangeland Ecology

The research interests of Klaus involve Rangeland Ecology . This includes several aspects of vegetation dynamics of natural rangelands in Southern Africa, namely:

• The process leading to the degradation and contributing to the desertification of the semi-arid grasslands,

• Range condition assessment and the development of degradation\condition assessment and management models, Restoration/rehabilitation of the denuded ranges and grasslands

From 1988 he lectures at the now North-West University (Potchefstroom campus), first as a lecturer and from 2000 as Professor in Terrestrial Plant Ecology. His field of expertise lie in a number of aspects concerning vegetation dynamics,
the construction of range condition assessment models for sustainable resource management, the degradation and desertification of the arid- and semi-arid rangelands, as well as the restoration and rehabilitation of degraded rangelands.

 
He is also the project leader of a number of research projects, with regard to restoration ecology in the arid- and semi arid rangelands in southern Africa. Currently he is the national co-ordinator of the Desert Margins Program (DMP) in South Africa. The DMP operates in 9 countries in Africa.  He also serves on many committees on a regional and national level, regarding research and development projects for LandCare, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and aspects concerning grassland/rangeland science.
 

Hennie Snyman

Hennie in his office