Day 2 - Sampling plants in the Desert

Most people associate the name Pella with delicious large dates and a green oasis surrounded by palm trees in dry desert-like environment.

Modern day Pella boasts an imposing cathedral built by the Anglican missionaries in 1814.The town was named after the ancient town in Biblical times that served as a refuge for Christians who fled from the Roman soldiers. Around modern day Pella gemstones like malachite, jasper and rose quarts can still be found. Although Pella is a few kilometers away from the Orange River at the base of the stark Great Pella Mountains life is still a struggle against the harsh elements of this extreme climate.

Hair nets and coats compulsory while visting the Karstens Date Depot

Date plantation

Klein Pella owned by Piet Karsten, is situated a few kilometers away from this settlement and is world renowned for the quality of the dates produced. The original Medjoul dates came from Morocco and the first date trees were planted on this farm from 1980 onwards. Today, the farm is about 18,000hectares in size with 14,000palm trees. Vineyards are also cultivated on this farm. The area is ideally suited for the cultivation of these fine quality dates due to the dry climate and high temperature and the proximity of a water source. Every date tree requires 1,200 liters of water daily and the water is pumped from the Orange River and flooded in the orchards or watered by micro irrigation. No chemicals are used but the farming of dates is labour intensive with 500 labourers working shifts around the clock. One thousand tons of dates are produced every year on Klein Pella Farm and 60% of this production is exported to all over the world.

Exploring, on a Toyota of course!

Sampling

The teams of botanists set out early this morning to explore the surroundings around Klein Pella Guest Farm and returned late afternoon to classify and document the finds of the day in the field laboratory.

Anthony Magee is a Senior Scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute where he is based at the Compton Herbarium, Kirstenbosch. Together with Stephen Boatwright from the University of the Western Cape they are leading a large scale national project, involving many other specialists from around the country, to document the diverse plants that occur in the summer rainfall Karoo regions of the Northern and Western Cape Province. This information will be used to produce a book which will help to identify the plants from the region and their known geographic distributions. This area is thought to contain about 3 000 plant species but as it is still so poorly explored by botanists, this figure remains hypothetical with many new species still to be discovered.

The team in the Quiver Wood near Pella

Detailed records of utmost importance

Today we explored the Gariep Desert which is one of the most arid regions in the country. It was fascinating to see how many species grow and flower under these extreme conditions and particularly how rapidly they have responded to the recent rains of just a few days earlier. Already the veld was full of seedlings and even the bulbous plants had produced their first sets of leaves.  As a result we were able to collect several very interesting plants, together with DNA material and photographs.

The team working  in the lab at Klein Pella, organising their inputs to the iBol Database

Day 1 - Journey to Klein Pella

What a sense of accomplishment and relief to finally arrive at our destination!

In more than one sense of the word this is very true for the 2013 Toyota Enviro Outreach. The plan is coming together after many hours of meetings and kilometers behind the wheel to scout for perfect site in our vast and varied country. The negotiation for sponsorships, vehicles and the logistics to get equipment and infrastructure is complete. The ideal environment for the invited scientists to achieve their goals has been created. We are ready to go!!

So from the far north and the south we meet the at Klein Pella Guest Farm,  40km from Pofadder with one singular goal in mind - Everybody is anxiously awaiting the opportunity to explore this arid Namakwa Karoo and to sample the different plant species that can be found in this beautiful, and for many, unknown part of South Africa.

The floral richness of the Northern Cape has not been explored and documented and this void needs urgent attention for various reasons but in particular to estimate the impact of the proposed “fracking” process on the vegetation in this region.

Prof Michele van der Bank, the project leader, has invited specialists in their different fields of botany to be part of this project and they hope to sample and collect many, if not all, examples of the available plants species.

Enroute to Klein Pella

Team from Gauteng

Elmarie & Isa preparing food for a hungry Outreach Team

Toyota Enviro Outreach 2013 Press Release

The Toyota Enviro Outreach for 2013 will provide a unique opportunity for scientists to study a remote and poorly explored part of the country, namely the arid, predominantly summer-rainfall regions of the Northern Cape. This area is composed largely of Nama-Karoo, but also includes arid bioregions of the Savannah and Succulent Karoo biomes, as well as the Gariep Desert along the Orange River. The region harbours many rare and interesting plant species, etching out a living in some of South Africa’s most arid environments, with many of these only known from few and very old herbarium records. The opportunity to do surveys of their populations and observe their habitats and the threats to them will enable improved conservation assessments and accurate locality information, vital components to ensuring the conservation of rare and threatened species when these data are applied to the development of conservation plans and land use decision support systems.

South Africa is the third most mega-diverse country in the world, with almost 10% of the world’s plant species. Without fundamental knowledge of this diversity the country will be limited in its ability to use this national asset to solve environmental and human welfare challenges. Furthermore, with the current unprecedented rate of extinction no other generation will have access to the number and diversity of species that we have now (many of which still remain unknown to science). The resources our biodiversity holds, especially species that are poorly known, are therefore extremely important and their preservation for future generations pivotal. Efforts such as the 2013 Toyota Enviro Outreach enable scientists to make strides in the exploration of these hidden treasures, ensuring their preservation.

In order for South Africa to meet the targets of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) has committed to produce a national electronic flora documenting all the species in the country by 2020. However, due to the immense scale of the South African flora, the compilation of smaller, more manageable regional Floras are necessary as a first step towards this goal. Several such Floras for South Africa have been completed with the result that the Northern Cape Nama-Karoo, along with the adjacent summer rainfall areas, is the last remaining region within the country still requiring a floristic treatment. This will also provide valuable information to draw up conservation strategies particularly in light of various potential threats to the region, such as proposed hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and various other mining activities in some parts of the Karoo.

The Toyota Enviro Outreach will start on April 2nd at the Klipbokkop Mountain Reserve and will run until April 14th, during which time scientists and students from the University of Johannesburg, the South African National Biodiversity Institute, University of Pretoria, and University of Cape Town will visit several floristically interesting sites in the extremely arid Gariep region (Gariep Desert, Bushmanland Inselbergs, quartz patches) and the Upper Nama-Karoo region of the Northern Cape Province, with the goal to collect material for herbarium specimens and DNA barcoding, as well as information about species distributions, population surveys of threatened species, habitat and threat assessment data while also recording information about plant utilisation.

ADDITIONAL NOTES TO EDITORS:

The International Barcode of Life (iBOL) project is a Canadian-led research alliance, which spans 26 countries and brings together hundreds of leading scientists in the task of collecting specimens, obtaining their DNA barcode records and building an informatics platform to store and share the information for use in species identification and discovery. By 2015, iBOL participants will gather DNA barcode records for five million specimens representing 500,000 species, delivering a highly effective identification system for species commonly encountered by humanity and laying the foundation for subsequent progress towards a barcode reference library for all life.

African Centre for DNA Barcoding - http://www.acdb.co.za
iBol project - http://ibol.org
Toyota Enviro Outreach – http://www.toyotaoutreach.com 
ispot southern Africa  http://www.ispot.org.za/
Global Strategy for Plant Conservation  http://www.plants2020.net/

CONTACT DETAILS:

Michelle van der Bank 
University of Johannesburg
Mobile: 082 837 5567
Email: mvdbank@uj.ac.za

Anthony Magee 
South African National Biodiversity Institute
Mobile: 082 941 9942
Email: a.magee@sanbi.org.za

Stephen Boatwright 
University of the Western Cape
Mobile: 072 639 3928
Email: jboatwright@uwc.ac.za

Gerhard & Elmarie Groenewald 
Klipbokkop Mountain Resort 
Mobile: 082 579 4515
Email: elmarie@kbkm.co.za