We focus on understanding and predicting the effects of global changes and their drivers on ecosystems and their component wild species, with a keen interest in species rich systems of southern Africa. While our bias is towards fundamental research, we aspire to establish direct relevance in the application of our results. Our work is also informed by and contributes to the assessment of global change risks to biodiversity, the development of potential adaptive solutions, and the identification of potentially maladaptive responses.
Ecophysiology.
Ecophysiology is the study of the physiological responses of organisms to their environment, and attempts to uncover the mechanisms by which organisms adapt to environmental conditions, fluctuations, and changes. The tools of our trade include instruments and experimental approaches that explore plant and leaf gas exchange, water relations, thermal and radiation relations, and nutrient relations. We have focused mainly on Fynbos, Succulent Karoo, Nama Karoo, Grassland and Savanna Biomes in Africa.
Ecosystem disturbance.
Ecosystem disturbance is fundamental to ecological dynamics, affecting population persistence and species coexistence in dynamic habitats. The dynamics of ecological systems at any level of organization typically encompass processes of growth and inhibition that are characteristic of disturbance and recovery, whether abiotic, such as wildfire or biotic, such as plant-animal interactions.
Species distribution modelling.
The lab engages in explanatory and predictive geographic range simulation of endemic, indigenous and invasive species using standard statistical methods for deriving species distribution models, and the development of improved methods through extensive collaborations. This area of study allows us to extrapolate our work in space and time, both to project future risks and to reconstruct past events and trends.
Systems ecology.
Systems ecology is the study of interacting species, ecological processes and environmental factors in a functioning system. This branch of ecology has proven valuable in global change science for its ability to upscale information to regional and global scales, and thus inform important policy decisions about, for example, the future of the world’s carbon balance, and climate change.
Production landscapes.
Production landscapes are complex patchworks of land under multiple uses that can range from conservation to high intensity agriculture. Understanding how these landscapes evolve under human social and economic driving forces, and how resilient they are to use intensity, will be critical for a sustainable future.
Conservation responses.
It is vital for our group to be able to make contributions to the development of conservation responses that make sense for species, ecosystems and for human livelihoods. We apply many elements of the results we find in informing Conservation Planning and Conservation risk assessments.