US-Swaziland Planning Visit: Social and Ecological Drivers Impacting Biodiversity in Southern Africa

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This CNIC project supports a planning visit that will allow the PI, Samantha Wisely, co-PI, John Stepp, and other colleagues from the University of Florida, to meet with new colleagues from the University of Swaziland and Kruger National Park in South Africa to develop a multidisciplinary research project that evaluates the interrelationships between biodiversity, ecosystem functions and human wellbeing. As ecosystems are changing around the globe, especially with expanding land use for agriculture, it is important to understand how rapid changes in land use alter biodiversity and ecosystem functions, and how in turn altered ecosystem functions impact the health and livelihoods of people. This planning visit will prepare to test a conceptual model linking the causes and consequences of ecological and sociological interrelationships in ecosystems. The team plans to study links among different components of the system, the dynamics of the feedbacks, and the scales at which the components interact to test a general hypothesis that high biodiversity improves the wellbeing of people. They will perform the planning for research to evaluate the interrelationship of three triads: a) plant diversity, medicinal resources, and human health and nutrition, b) mammal diversity, disease prevalence, and human health, c) pollinator diversity, agricultural productivity, and human nutrition and wealth. The team plans to conduct work across three different countries where they will survey for biodiversity across agro-ecological gradients looking focusing on three components: rodents, pollinators, and vascular plants. This project will bring together sociologists and ecologists from Africa and the US, including two US graduate students and several African students, to collaborate on a compelling socio-ecological system in a biodiversity hotspot, the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Biodiversity Hotspot in southern Africa, which is currently in danger of losing its high species diversity and endemic biota due to rapid land conversion to industrialized agriculture. An improved understanding of the relationships among biodiversity, ecosystem function and human wellbeing will impact land use governance and personal and cultural valuations of ecological resources, helping to promote environmental sustainability while the planet prepares to feed a projected 9 billion people by 2050.