Garden Route & Frontier Research Unit
The Garden Route National Park (GRNP) Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is operated by Scientific Services at both the Knysna and Rondevlei offices. GIS practitioners are responsible for the acquisition, production, maintenance, analysis and dissemination of geospatial data for the GRNP and surrounding buffer zones. Service delivery is mainly for the GRNP but support is often provided to other national parks upon request.
A number of GIS and printing services are provided to both Park Management and Scientific Services personnel in support of park planning and operations, environmental monitoring, and research.
These include:
- Access to our GIS databases
- Creation and printing of custom maps
- Creation of digital searchable maps
- Spatial analyses
- Planning for invasive alien plant control and rehabilitation
- Provision of data for the pavement management system
- Development, planning and maintenance of recreation maps
- Database management of a land register for integration of land under different ownership into GRNP as it becomes available
- Administration of the CyberTracker system
- Spatial analysis of monitoring projects including: community changes in emergent aquatic plants in the Wilderness Lakes; distribution changes in sand prawn in Swartvlei Estuary; sediment movement in estuaries; consumptive resource use in estuarine and marine systems.
In addition, GIS practitioners maintain various non-GIS databases on meteorology, sea surface temperature, hydrology, species inventories and building registers.
GIS data are available in vector format (boundaries, climate, fauna, flora, fire, geology, soils, hydrology, land classification, topography, infrastructure, ownership), raster format (elevation, terrain, agrohydrology and climatology) and various imagery (SPOT, Landsat, orthorectified aerial photographs).
Contact
Knysna Office:
Rondevlei Office:
