Thursday 9 October 2014

Template for LUDS presentation in Second-life

Hi

I have added more information to the first set of slides and completed half of  the assessmentt section 14h00 Friday 10 October

Download the template Power Point here -

Download the assessment for the Qarbon Campus Experimental Farm to understand the data included in the template Power Point above
Download map of assessment area

Your LUDS assessments for farmers, officers and researchers


Hi

Here are the LUDS reports that were sent to me yesterday and the spreadsheet of the developments/assessment areas

Download assessment area descriptions

Assessment area maps

Beaufort West.pdf
Bergrivier.pdf
Bitou.pdf
Breedevalley.pdf
George.pdf
Hessequa.pdf
Ikwezi.pdf
Kamiesberg.pdf
Kannaland.pdf
Knysna.pdf
Kou-Kamma.pdf
Kouga.pdf
Laingsburg.pdf
Nhlambe.pdf
Oudtshoorn.pdf
Prince Albert.pdf
richtersveld.pdf
SaldanhaBay.pdf
Stellenbosch-Drakenstein.pdf
Sundays River.pdf
Witzenberg.pdf

LUDS report pdfs sent in by students - I have replaced these with the report you submitted on 16 October for the World Food day event

Nhlambe's report was given to me on a memory stick

Wednesday 8 October 2014

EIA Assessment Practical 2

Hi

We are running out of time for me to show you how to extract data from the BGIS website. We will simply move on to concentrate on each of you finding your assessment area in your municipality from the description given in the spreadsheet below. The descriptions for both groups of ten students are included.

Download assessment area descriptions

We will then use the LUDS tool to extract the information you need into a pdf LUDS report and interpret the results.

I would still like you to work with your partner, the previously helped partner can now help their previously unhelped partner to find their assessment area. You can then help each other with the LUDS tool and interpreting the pdf LUDS report.

See you later
Martin

Tuesday 7 October 2014

EIA Assessment Practical 1

Hi

I will explain in class how you are going to proceed with your assessment of a development in your chosen municipality.

You will work in pairs and all will be revealed later including the developments you must assess.

Download the first group of developments for assessment

Thursday 2 October 2014

The products you should have after the municiaplities practicals

On completing these two practical should have the following products which you can now compare to the municipal biodiversity summaries which can be found in the LUDS section of the BGIS website.

For you municipality in all cases when calculating % area of your municipality use the area in the Sa municipalites Albers shape file provided in practical 2 

  1. A list of the protected areas with their area in Hectares and percentage of the municipality area in Hectares

    You obtained this by (also see the previous postings)

    Clipping the NBA 2011 formal protected areas shape file available on BGIS by the SA municipal boindaries shape file (provided for download in this blog) with your municipality selected and then dissolving it by oroitected area name.

    In order to get the areas you projected the file to the Albers Equal Area projection in QGIS and added an area and a percentage of municipality field called what ever you like in ArcView 3.2 see the posting below for the method.

  2.  A list of the vegetation types 2006  with their area in hectares and percentage of the municipality area in hectares

    You obtained this by (also see the previous postings)

    Clipping the National Vegetation Map 2006 shape file available on BGIS by the SA municipal boundaries shape file (provided for download in this blog) with your municipality selected and then dissolving it by oroitected area name.

    In order to get the areas you projected the file to the Albers Equal Area projection in QGIS and added an area column called "origarea" and a percentage of municipality called what ever you like in Arcview 3.2 see the posting below see posting below for the method.

  3.  A list of the vegetation types 2009  with their area in hectares and percentage of the municipality area in hectares by exactly the same method as above but using the 2009 SA Vegetation map update available on BGIS.

  4. And now for the tricky bit threat (conservation/ecosystem) status for the 2006 SA Vegetation type list for municipality

    You obtained this by

    Clipping the land cover shape file provided by the SA municipalities Alber shape file provided on the blog. Note the land cover is in Albers and it must therefore be clipped by the SA Mnicipaliies Albers shape. Now select gridcodes 1 and 5 which code for natural land cover.

    Clip the vegetation 2006 shape file projected into albers created  in 2 above by this clipped landcover shape file. This gives the remaining extent of the vegetation. Dissolve this new shape as the clipping will have added many polygons again. Remember to retain all the fields when dissolving it.

    Add a new area field called "remarea" and a remaining vegetaation percentage of municipality area field called what ever you like.

    Add another field for the percentage remaining for each vegetation type remarea/origarea*100

    Now check on the  BGIS website for the cut offs for threat status. A what percentage remaining is it classified as Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable  and Least Threatened and add a last field indicating the vegetation types threat status.

    Create a map of the vegetation types threat status using the correct colours for threat status as the legend. These may be found on BGIS.

You now have several summarized statistics which you can compare with those provided in the BGIS Biodiversity Summaries.

Try to understand whether the differences you see are due to real changes in the area of say the protected areas or due to a shift in the municipal boundaries.

  • For a start do this by comparing the provided you used in your calculation that you got from the SA municipalities Albers shape file NOTE Albers and the BGIS municipal area..
  • Compare the protected area sizes of your list to that on BGIS. Is there more land protected now, was this simply due to a shift in a boundary. 
  • Do the same for SA vegetation 2006 and 2009 comparing them to each other for changes in vegetation classification and for discrepancies by comparing the summaries 2206 vegetation types list to yours. Any discrepancies here should be due to a change in the boundary if your calculations were correct. Can you see where s is? Check by looking at the vegetation shape file in the downloadable  zipped biodiversity summaries shape files available for your municipality on BGIS .
  • Compare your list of threatened ecosystems and that of the biodiversity summaries on BGIS are they the same or similar. Remember the summaries list of threatened ecosystems/vegetation types was calculated nationally and then clipped for your municipality whereas  you calculated the threat status for your municipality's vegetation type  separately which will may lead to some interesting anomalies if a vegetation has been unevenly transformed across it distribution. For instance your municipality may have the last really large remaining piece which may lower its threat status when calculated for the municipality but raise it when calculated nationally.   

In power point use the lists with area you calculated for protected areas and vegetation types and the map of threat status to illustrate your more interesting findings of any of the anomalies or true increases/decreases you have found.