Scientific Services

Five staff were hired on the new project funded by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation. This project focuses on modernising SANParks’ biodiversity data management systems and mobilising data for management and policy use. The JRS project team are based at the four Scientific Services nodes and are collating data and knowledge from multiple parks.

Daniëlle has been based in Cape Town at the Cape Research Centre since December 2022. She has a Master’s degree in Geographical Information Systems. Her thesis connected Remote Sensing imagery with detailed field work to enhance the understanding of spatial patterns of wetland vegetation types, wetland functioning and processes. She enjoys working with big data and organising it into digestible easy-to-understand datasets for visualisation, interpretation, and analysis. You will often find her with a laptop open organising data or working on a map.

Daniëlle is responsible for carrying out an inventory of visual datasets (e.g. camera trap data; fixed point photos) and developing a strategy and operational plan for capturing, storing, managing and analysing visual data across parks.

Aldwin has been based at the Rondevlei Office in the Garden Route since December 2022. He has an MSc and PhD in Marine Biology from Rhodes University. He previously conducted research on heavy metal pollution in estuaries, looking at how heavy metals are transferred from up the food chain to higher trophic level organisms, such as fish, with possible consequences for humans. He has also done research on the distribution of endolithic cyanobacteria along the South African coast and how these affect the energy budget of mussels, impacting their growth and reproduction. Aldwin enjoys fieldwork and in the past you would find him on rocky shores and sand banks counting all the invertebrates that he could find.

Aldwin is responsible for collating freshwater and estuarine data across parks, conducting literature review, identifying, reviewing, and analysing SANParks’ datasets and developing reports to meet key management and policy needs.

Tlou Masehela joined the Skukuza Scientific Services team in January 2023. He is responsible for collating invertebrate and pollinator knowledge and data across parks.

Tlou holds a PhD in Entomology from Stellenbosch University and previously worked for the South African National Biodiversity Institute and was in the environmental consultancy space for about a year. His previous work was more multidisciplinary across the environmental and agricultural sectors, focussed on pollinators, specifically honey bees and hoverflies, environmental impacts and monitoring, environmental risk assessments and elements of biosafety for Genetically Modified Organisms, particularly maize, soybean and cotton. Tlou is passionate about insect pollination work and research that involves plant-insect interactions. He also enjoys working on policy instruments and has served on provincial and national working groups for assessments, frameworks, action plans and policy reviews.

The key objective of Tlou’s work is to produce a State of Knowledge report for invertebrates and pollinators across parks. His work will also cover key areas around identifying knowledge gaps, priority research areas, and ways to strengthen management and policy instruments within these groups.

Morena started working on the project in October 2022 and is based in Kimberley at the Arid Research Node. He is a GIS and remote sensing enthusiast. He received his BSc (Hons) in Geography from the University of the Free State (UFS) and later completed his MSc in Geography at the University of Pretoria. Morena’s MSc project aimed at understanding the determinants of aardvark (Orycteropus afer) burrow sites in Rietvlei Nature Reserve in Pretoria.

He is currently enrolled for a PhD in geography at the UFS. Morena has experience using geospatial software and statistical programming languages and is responsible for managing species occurrence data for parks. This job involves data inventory, cleaning, curation and collation with a useful output being the creation of checklists for parks.

After working for a year as the Bioinformatics Officer on a previous project funded by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation, Dian was appointed as the Bioinformatics and Science Manager to continue working towards collating, standardising and sharing biodiversity occurrence data for national parks in South Africa. She is based at the Cape Research Centre in Cape Town.

Dian has a PhD in Zoology from Stellenbosch University and an MSc in Conservation Biology from the University of Cape Town. She previously conducted research on antelope translocations in the game industry, introductions of alien species and their impacts in South African national parks and countries globally, and the adaptation of society to climate change. She has also managed an inter-disciplinary research programme on adaptation to climate change in semi-arid regions, which included engaging with and communicating research findings and recommendations to policymakers, practitioners and small-scale farming communities.

Dian enjoys working with data in MS Excel and has learned lots of useful data management tricks that she’ll gladly share. She reports to project funders and makes sure the project runs smoothly as well as working with software developers to develop tools to improve the management of SANParks’ biodiversity occurrence data.

This article was originally published in the 2022/2023 Research Report.