USER STORY

Supporting Elephant Management through changes in Land Cover

Transboundary Consulting Africa aims to use its knowledge of the natural environment, to assist in eliminating the conflict between human development and conservation in and around the transfrontier areas of Africa.

It is our vision to assist Africa in realising the value of its natural resources to benefit its people, whilst at the same time protecting the value of the naturally occurring ecosystems, to the people of this continent, using Esri technology.  Transboundary Conservation Foundation accesses Esri technology through the Conservation Grant Programme offered by Esri South Africa.

The Challenge

Changes in land cover through the loss of natural areas due to urban development or a change in the type of land use in the areas, affects natural landscapes and the concentration of wildlife and elephants. These environmental conditions have a devastating affect on African elephant’s annual migration routes. The understanding on how changes in landcover can affect wildlife habitat loss in the future, is critical for conservation efforts. Transboundary Consulting Africa  embarked on land cover change study over time that will support management of biodiversity, ecosystem services and elephant management.

The Project

The project includes the use of ArcGIS Pro to visualise land cover change to determine and to understand the distribution and the mapping of migration routes of elephants in Southern Africa. Through various resources such as the European Space Agency (ESA), Living Atlas of the world datasets, a global database for land cover for each of the years from 1982 to 2018 was used.

Conclusion

Using ArcGIS Pro we could  visualise and analyse the change information over time and understand the land cover changes in Transfrontier Conservation areas such as the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA) and Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation areas. Wildlife management plans especially for GLTFCA are now being implemented and the information on change over time resulted in a clearer understanding of ecosystem services and the different migration patterns of the elephants for conservation management.

Credits:

ESA – Global Land Cover Products 1992 – 2018 www.esa-landcover-cci.org

USAID – Combating Illegal Wildlife Trafficking Project

Contact Details
Prof WF van Riet [email protected]
Transboundary Consulting Africa
Tel: 082 826 4914