#orycs

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Closing the Chapter on ORYCS: A Successful Project with Impactful Insights

The ORYCS research project recently concluded with a dynamic final workshop, bringing together stakeholders, researchers, and educators. A brief reflection on the project's highlights, collaborative efforts, and practical outcomes.

The final workshop showcased ORYCS's key findings and innovative approaches. Stakeholders actively engaged, offering valuable insights and steering discussions. The workshop encapsulated the spirit of knowledge exchange that defined ORYCS.

ORYCS prioritized practical impact through workshops and interactive sessions. Knowledge transfer efforts reached international students, community leaders and practitioners, bridging the gap between research and application.

ORYCS made a mark in academic circles with numerous scientific publications, contributing to ongoing discourse and providing a foundation for future research. Graduate students and researchers thrived within the project, producing impactful theses and contributing to diverse disciplines.

As ORYCS concludes, it leaves behind a legacy of collaboration, knowledge, and practical outcomes. The final workshop and the project as a whole exemplify the positive impact of research on land use management, setting the stage for future endeavors.

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Working together in inter-cultural teams! In academia we are so used to the fact that team members and colleagues have various cultural backgrounds that we often forget about the potential issues this difference may imply. From August 15th-18th we finally managed to have our respective short course on "Intercultural competencies and communication" at HEJA Game Lodge / Windhoek, Namibia. Our coaches Ben Schernick and Wendy Huschfield from Co-Create Change Consultancies guided participants from different countries through an inspiring and insightful week.

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All good

For more than one year this kudu cow is part of our research project and she is just fine. The kudu provides us with deep insights into her daily routines. For instance, we can learn how often she visits water points in the course of the year. You can explore yourself in this video. Every time the kudu visits a water point the blue dot pops up. Ten seconds of video show one month of movement data.

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(online) Annual Meeting & Stakeholder briefing 2021

Again, Covid forced us into having several of our planned meetings online-only. So it happened that we had an online annual meeting and stakeholder briefing in September 2021. After having missed a lot of the planned field work in 2020, we could now meet not only to plan ahead but also, to discuss our results from the successful field work in 2020/2021 that could take place irrespective of lockdowns and travel restrictions. And it was a lot! We have e.g. learned about movement of wildlife, its interaction with the landscape and fences, human-wildlife-interactions, plant responses to wildlife activities, simulation of savanna vegetation and wildlife and much more. Finally, a couple of days after our internal annual meeting, we have invited dozens of Namibian stakeholders to brief them on ORYCS progress and results. We felt honored by the numerous people showing interest in our work and enjoyed the joint discussions. We do hope a lot that our final project meetings in 2022, especially those with Namibian experts, decision makers and land users can take place in person in Namibia.

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ORYCS short course "Introduction to Ecological modelling" From Nov 21-27 2021, a team of supervisors from Potsdam and Berlin took a break from the German winter and met with about 20 participants from Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Germany at the HEJA Guest Lodge near Windhoek, Namibia to teach an introduction to ecological models. Participants learned the programming language NetLogo, conceptualizing ecological models, implementing and last but not least testing and analysing them. The class was great fun and we're hoping to repeat something similar soon!

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Ecological research? We start from the people!

Hi there! Here are Manjana and Alice two master students. We are in the Orycs study area interviewing farmers to get more knowledge on the social-ecological part of the project. We already visited 18 different farms: commercial and communal, with different management types such as cattle or sheep farms, game hunting farms and tourism as well as a mix of these.

With our questionnaire we ask farmers about their perception of wildlife, local knowledge about biodiversity and policies that affect their activity. This will help to better understand the social-ecological dynamics.

It’s really interesting to listen to different opinions and perceptions of natural and social aspects in this area.

In the beginning, it was a bit difficult to contact the farmers and get an appointment, but the more you meet them the more contact we got and many farmers were really nice and willing to help.

12 interviews to go and then we will have the data to analyze for our master thesis! Wish us luck!

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After Namibia has re-opened its boarders and cases of COVID-19 infection are decreasing currently, our PhD student Tim Herkenrath togehther with former NUST MSc student Kaarina Shilula grasped the opportunity to resume our studies at Etosha Heights Private Game Reserve in order to diminish the negative impact of an interrupted field season to the greatest extent possible. A long-term experiment was set-up last year already to measure sap flow densities as a proxy for water use in mopane trees (Colophospermum mopane) under different degrees of simulated leaf browsing. First results provide good evidence that individuals, which have experienced a decent level of herbivory, show a reduced amount of water use (see 3rd Newsletter).

Apparently, a decreased amount of water that is taken up from the ground by plants is likely to affect soil moisture contents. This link will be examined during the next step of our study in more details. Right now, we are installing soil probes that measure sub-canopy soil moisture content in 6 different depths. Even though drilling holes in a dry African Savanna is quite strenuous and sweaty, we are now curious to obtain first promising results as soon as wet seasons begins. Furthermore, we are particularly interested in potential feedbacks between altered soil moisture conditions and germination success of grasses. In addition, the start of the rainfall season will enable us to explore even more aspects of water use strategies of mopane and how these might change in response to herbivorous pressure. Thus, we are keen to conduct a variety of analyses including stomatal conductance measurements, pressure-volume curves and isotopic analyses of xylem water during the following weeks. These results together with sap flow and soil moisture data will provide further profound insights into consequences of mammalian herbivory on tree water use and its relevance for vertical water fluxes and ecosystem functioning at landscape level. Our findings will contribute to the main objective of ORYCS, which aims to assess chances, risks and sustainability of wildlife based land-use in Namibian savannas. 

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On the Edge of Namibian Enquiry

John Mendelsohn, director of Ongava Research Centre, shares burning research questions to inspire scientists on the quest for knowledge to guide management actions.

A perspective on conservation and ecological research questions in the context of Namibias environment by John Mendelsohn. 

A strong statement for basic ecological research in times where obviously we all need solutions - and fast. And ORYCS is chasing right after some of the risen key questions.