Floods give UW researcher new direction to pursue

When Fisheries professor Robert Naiman set out to study river ecosystems in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, he and his colleagues never intended to study the rivers as they flowed through their newly constructed research lab.

“Floodwater in February came halfway up the walls, which is amazing to me because we built these places on a bluff overlooking a dry river. It’s hard for me to imagine the water ever coming up that high,” Naiman said.

Researchers involved in a collaborative study of riparian environments in South Africa meet in their Kruger National Park camp. Photo courtesy of Robert Naiman.

The devastating floods, the worst in over 100 years, involve an entire system of South African rivers that drain into Mozambique’s Limpopo River. Access to Naiman’s research camps has been affected primarily by flooding of the Shingwedzi, which runs through the northern part of the park, and the Sabie in the south. The floods came just two months after the dedication of a new laboratory. While the school and several houses in the nearby village of Skukuza were destroyed, Naiman and his colleagues have been relatively lucky: the laboratory and living quarters of the researchers have remained standing.

The research program is a collaborative effort involving ecologists from South Africa and the United States. The main purpose is to understand the ecological dynamics of the areas called “riparian zones,” the long ribbons of vegetation alongside rivers and streams. Among other things, these zones play an important role in sustaining wildlife during the dry season, and Naiman and his colleagues hope to better understand the structure of the riparian areas and their place in the savanna.

Kruger National Park, which is known as the flagship of South Africa’s national park system, provides a perfect environment for this type of research. Its four million acres are home to 1,980 species of plants, 505 species of birds and 147 animal species. Among the larger animals are some familiar savanna-dwellers - lion, zebra, giraffe and elephant (of which there are more than 9,000).

But such biodiversity is not the only thing South Africa has to offer American researchers. According to Naiman, there is much we can learn from the South Africans, who often manage their watersheds with a greater sensitivity to the needs of the environment than is demonstrated in the United States.

Traditionally in South Africa, the water “rights” of the environment are approximately equal to those of the human population. Naiman cites as an example of this an instance in which South African fruit growers voluntarily stopped irrigating their plantations at the end of a long drought so that there would be sufficient water for the wildlife in Kruger National Park. The plantation owners did this without the expectation of government compensation for the loss of their crops, reflecting a very different view of environmental responsibility than found here, Naiman says.

This exchange of ideas, naturally, works both ways. As part of this partnership, Naiman has American students working with him in South Africa, and a number of South African students will study in various parts of this country, including the UW. One long-term objective is to provide information and training to the next generation of South African ecologists so they can make use of the latest ecological science in managing Kruger National Park and other areas that are vital to the survival of indigenous wildlife.

In April, Naiman will return to South Africa to meet with his colleagues. They will travel to the various sites that they had been monitoring for the past decade and determine how to proceed in the wake of the floods. Much of the vegetation that they had planned to study is now gone, and the focus of their efforts will likely shift to the recovery of the riparian zones.

Though they have suffered enormous setbacks, the devastation has afforded Naiman and his colleagues the unexpected opportunity to study how riparian communities form and how their formation is affected in the early stages by animal browsing and the invasion of exotic species. ¶

Tricia Kenealy, News & Information