The Phalaborwa Land Use Laboratory

The land surrounding the town of Phalaborwa (Limpopo Province) contains a variety of land uses and land management styles, many characteristic of the major land uses of the semi-arid savannas throughout southern Africa. These include large protected areas (the Kruger National Park and the adjacent "Association of Private Nature Reserves"), game farms, rural rangelands (including large areas of small-scale cultivation) and mines. Phalaborwa therefore provides an excellent location to study the effects of land use on biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as the interactive effects of land use, global climate change and rising atmospheric CO2. This project currently involves assembling a range of base-line surveys for indicators of ecoystem-level biodiversity (including herbaceous and woody plant, dung beetle and bird diversity, and mammal, heptofauna and amphibian species richness). Annual data for selected ecosystem services variables (specifically net primary productivity and secondary productivity) are steadily accumulating.