Workshop planning
I would like to suggest the following agenda for the workshop
| Day | Topic |
|---|---|
| 1 |
Overview of the Mgobezeleni Project
|
| 2 | Hydrology followed by field trip to show streams, lakes, boreholes and landuse impacts |
| 3 | Ecology followed by field trip to see the different systems |
| 4 | Biology and water quality followed by field trip to see |
| 5 | Student training/projects followed by closure |
Where do we present the estuary?
How do we include Steve and Janine?
Our original aim was to run a course over 10 days.
I envisaged each day consisting of a lecture, a field excursion (to see something in the field - e.g. different types of wetlands; to have a practical demonstration of something - e.g. pump-testing a borehole or measuring stream flow rates, or to collect something e.g. water samples, plants for identification) and a task that the students had to achieve ( e.g. draft a map showing location of features, map of the estuary margin, checklist of plants from a specific wetland, calculations of groundwater flow through the estuary berm etc)
We need to limit the number of participants to a manageable number.
Our priority must be post-grads from UniZul and NMMU (if they come on board). Then we have said we need to train field managers ( Ezemvelo staff and others) . Into this category fall the DAEA staff who have done the soil survey.
As well as the above, we had talked about a mini-series of lectures - aimed at local community members and people with little scientific background
It will be great to have the German visitors - but we should be careful not to compromise our stated objectives and our target audiences - and also the content we present.
My feeling is that we do create a different set of lectures as well - which we do over a day and aimed specifically at groups such as the German group. We plan our conference presentations to provide much of the material needed - and also plan our WRC report-back to tie in with this as well