Publications
Partners
- Two aircraft from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will conduct surveys in the Cape over the next few months.
- The administration is part of a huge consortium of partners that a part of a unique biodiversity project in the Greater Cape Floristic Region.
- The project aims to better understand the biodiversity in the region and how nature impacts humans.
- For more stories visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
Two aircraft from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) took to the skies on Tuesday to start collecting data for a unique biodiversity research project in the Cape.
NASA commissioned Gulfstream 3 and Gulfstream 5 planes to fly for surveys until the end of the year in different regions of interest in the Greater Cape Floristic Region.
This is according to Dr Jasper Slingsby, the South African lead scientist for the BioSCape project, who is also a lecturer at the University of Cape Town's biological sciences department.
The aircraft will make use of four different instruments to collect data that covers a large wavelength range. The dataset that it will gather will be unique in size, scope, and level of detail for this type of project.
READ MORE | NASA delegation in SA to 'rekindle' its relationship with the country
The BioSCape project will combine data collected from NASA research planes, satellites and ground observations to better understand the biodiversity of the Greater Cape Floristic Region and its contribution to people. It was officially launched on 17 October.
The ground observation initiatives include animal counts, the collection of DNA, vegetation surveys, ocean phytoplankton samples, and bird and frog call recordings.
Satellite imagery will be used for the project. This includes Landsat imagery which has been recorded for multiple decades, which can be used to log changes on the earth's surface.
Informing decisions
In a press release from the National Research Foundation, Slingsby said the information gathered during the project would be essential to support biodiversity and conservation management strategies for the region.
"BioSCape is a unique and exciting project that will help reveal new insights about the biodiversity of one of the most diverse regions on Earth and provide new tools for mapping and monitoring it," he said.
The hope is that project can develop new technologies for the monitoring and management of nature's contribution to people.
Dr Mary-Jane Bopape, the managing director of the South African Environmental Observation Network or the National Research Foundation, hailed South Africa’s cutting edge biodiversity research.
"This cutting-edge project is a testament to the world-class biodiversity research that is being conducted in South Africa. We are committed to contributing to the collection of data and using the information generated by BioSCape to inform environmental management decisions in the region" she said.
Collaboration
There are around 50 institutional partners for the project, including many South African and US universities. Columbia University which is in the Ivy League institutions in the US is amongst the partners.
More than 150 scientists in total will be involved with the project. There are 19 different research projects listed on the BioSCape website, each from a different research institution.
The South African National Space Agency (Sansa) will also contribute to the project.
ANALYSIS | What happened to SA’s R4.4-billion space infrastructure hub?
News24 asked Sansa spokesperson Vaneshree Maharaj how the agency intended to contribute. She said Sansa did not want to comment because discussions on the project have not been concluded.
Slingsby said funding was only available for the first round of surveys, but that partner companies would explore opportunities to repeat surveys in the future.
