Mountain Watch: How LT(S)ER Is Safeguarding Southern Africa’s People and Biodiversity for a Sustainable Mountain Future

Clinton Carbutt and Dave I. Thompson
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Clinton Carbutt: Scientific Services, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, P.O. Box 13053, Cascades 3202, South Africa
Dave I. Thompson: South African Environmental Observation Network, Ndlovu Node, Scientific Services, Kruger National Park, Private Bag X1021, Phalaborwa 1390, South Africa

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 10, 1-27

Abstract: Southern Africa is an exceptionally diverse region with an ancient geologic and climatic history. Its mountains are located in the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes at a tropical–temperate interface, offering a rare opportunity to contextualise and frame our research from an austral perspective to balance the global narrative around sustainable mountain futures for people and biodiversity. Limited Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) was initiated more than a century ago in South Africa to optimise catchment management through sound water policy. The South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) has resurrected many government LTER programmes and added observatories representative of the country’s heterogeneous zonobiomes, including its mountain regions. LTER in other Southern African mountains is largely absent. The current rollout of the Expanded Freshwater and Terrestrial Environmental Observation Network (EFTEON) and the Southern African chapters of international programmes such as the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA), RangeX, and the Global Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (Soil BON), as well as the expansion of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN), is ushering in a renaissance period of global change research in the region, which takes greater cognisance of its social context. This diversity of initiatives will generate a more robust knowledge base from which to draw conclusions about how to better safeguard the well-being of people and biodiversity in the region and help balance livelihoods and environmental sustainability in our complex, third-world socio-ecological mountain systems.

Keywords: alpine and montane ecosystems; austral perspective; environmental sustainability; global change; long-term research; mountain observatories; multi-disciplinary research; social context; socio-ecological coupling; Southern Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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