ORI Seminar Series: Marco J. Van De Wiel

This week, Marco Van De Wiel, Visiting Professor from Western Ontario University delivered a presentation on "Predicting Geomorphic changes". Since catchment sediment dynamics respond to external forces acting on the catchment: tectonics, climate and human activities, it is therefore often assumed that any change in the sediment dynamics directly reflects change in one or more of these external forces. However, the relation between forcing signal and response signal can be obscured because catchments also impose their own autogenic signal on the sediment dynamics. Moreover, this autogenic signal is highly non-linear because of thresholds in geomorphological processes, interactions and feedbacks between different processes, and response time-lags. This non-linear signal, imposed by the catchment itself, may prevent relating sediment dynamics to forcing signals, i.e. it may prevent linking cause and effect.His presentation addressed the weasel-word “may” from the previous sentence. Using numerical landscape evolution models as a virtual laboratory, the limits on the predictability and unpredictability catchment sediment dynamics are investigated. Is it indeed not possible to link cause to effect in landscape sediment dynamics? Or is it possible to gain insights about past external forces and to predict response to future ones, even in the presence of non-linear autogenic disturbances arising from the landscape itself?

ORI Seminar Series: Dr. Sorcha Diskin

As part of the ORI Seminar series, Dr Sorcha Diskin, an ORI scientist delivered a seminar on the topic "Sediment provenancing using whole rock geochemistry – how useful is it really?”. In her presentation, Dr. Diskin demonstrated how two applications of sediment geochemistry and the different discrimination diagrams can be used to shed light on the relationships of different materials. The first is in the traditional application of whole rock geochemistry to a sequence of sedimentary rocks, here the Botswana Karoo Supergroup. This application shows how the chemistry is able to demonstrate origin of the materials and a sequence of events. The second example, from the archaeological record where pottery (a geological material) was analysed and potential sources can be suggested for this material which are not obvious from traditional methods.

ORI presentations at Colloquim of African Geology23

Dr. Sorcha Diskin, a scientist from ORI has just returned from the CAG23 (Colloquium of African Geology) conference which was held at the University at Johannesburg from 9th-14th January 2011.This colloquium takes place every two years and this was only the fifth time it took place in Africa. Dr. Diskin presented the following two papers: "Characterisation of early BaTawana pottery from the Khwebe Hills of Northern Botswana: Implications for Raw Material Sourcing" - S. Diskin and C. Ashley; and "Southern Botswanas Ecca and Beaufort Groups: where did their sediments come from?" - S. Diskin and M. Wendorff. The full proceedings of the conference are now available in the ORI Library.

“The Okavango Delta and its place in the geomorphological evolution of Southern Africa".

The Alex du Toit Memorial lecture is a bi-annual event in honour of Dr Alex
du Toit, an internationally-recognised geologist who is probably one of the
strongest contenders for Africa’s greatest geologist of the 20th Century. He
is best remembered for his books on continental drift and the geology of southern Africa. Less well known are his important scientific contributions to our understanding of the geomorphological evolution of southern Africa, including the Okavango Delta. It was here that he conducted detailed surveys in 1925, including what was possibly the first-ever photo-geological survey in southern Africa. This year’s lecture will be delivered by Professor Terence McCarthy from the School of Geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand. It will review our present understanding of the geomorphological evolution of southern Africa from the time of the break-up of Gondwana to the present, highlighting du Toit’s contributions to the subject. The lecture will focus on the Okavango Delta, examining how it formed, how it works and how processes currently in place will ultimately destroy it. The lecture will be presented in a non-technical style and is aimed at those with a general interest in science and the world around us. The lecture will be held at the University of KwaZulu Natal School of Geological Sciences on Thursday, 30 September 2010 at 5.30 pm.

Habitat fragmentation

Habitat fragmentation refers to habitat being altered and resulting in a spatial separation of habitat units from a previous state of greater continuity. This phenomenon occurs naturally on a geologic time-scale or in unusual and catastrophic events. However, since the Holocene era, humans have produced dramatic and swift transformation of landscapes throughout the world, resulting in a level of habitat fragmentation that has induced worldwide reduction in biodiversity and interuption of sustainable yields of natural resources. Activities which cause this habitat fragmentation are mainly from agricultural land conversion, urbanization, pollution, deforestation and introduction of alien species.Prior to the dominance of mankind, long term changes engendered by geologic processes or climate oscillations contributed to habitat fragmentation. You can read the rest of the article from the Earth Portal site.

Multi-hazard mapping using Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

This brochure introduces a disaster risk reduction project implemented in the Philippines with the objective of reducing the population’s vulnerability to natural disasters like typhoon, landslide, flood, storm surge, tsunami, and earthquake, which pose risks to life, property and livelihood compounded by physical exposure and proximity to hazard-prone areas, socio-economic, and cultural and behavioral conditions. It goes on to explain how to integrate GIS-based multi-hazard mapping conveying a composite picture of natural hazards in varying magnitude, frequency and areas of effect, to local knowledge of communities gathered through Participatory Capacity and Vulnerability Assessment (PCVA), in order to provide relevant information for community planning and decision making, especially in emergency response, and disaster preparedness and mitigation. The paper details the processes, possible problems and uses of reliable multi-hazard maps as important risk assessment tools; and advocates for investment in capacity building activities to ensure active community participation in order to successfully perform multi-hazard mapping. For more visit:
http://www.preventionweb.net/files/13932_ACF1.pdf

Geological Society of America 2009 Conference

HOORC scientist Dr. Sorcha Diskin recently attended the Geological Society of America conference in Portland, Oregon, from (18th – 21st October 2009), where she presented a paper entitled "Geochemical and mineralogical indicators of stratigraphy and provenance of the Karoo supergroup in Southern Botswana" in the Geochemical Approaches to Sedimentary Provenance Studies session. The conference was attended by over 6000 delegates, mostly international representatives and held 160 topical sessions. Professor Sue Ringrose and Philippa Huntsman-Mapila were also represented in two other papers presented in the “Phanerozoic Paleoenvironmental Evolution of Africa” session. These were “Changes in biological productivity in response to tectonic and climate processes recorded in the sediments of paleolake mababe, northwestern Botswana ” and “Environmental change driven by tectonic processes and climate shifts as recorded in the sedimentary record of paleolake Mababe, Northern Botswana. Dr. Sorcha stated "the sessions were very interesting and informative and have given me ideas for work that could eventually be carried out here, both in the traditional geological sciences and in applied geological sciences (e.g. geoarchaeology).

New staff member at HOORC

Dr. Sorcha Diskin has joined HOORC, from the XRD laboratory main campus. She has worked extensively in Scotland and has spent the last two years on main campus running the XRD laboratory. Her research interests include :sedimentary geochemistry, detrial heavy minerals and clay mineralogy. Currently, she is involved in a number of research projects with the Geology Department of UB, and their study involves looking at the Karoo succession in Botswana as well as geological applications in archaelogy.She holds a Phd in Geochemistry from Oxford Brookes University . Welcome Dr. Diskin!

Boseto project update

The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported an update for the Boseto mining project near Lake Ngami. Discovery Metals Limited has announced "a significant upgrade to the mineral resource contained at its Petra Prospect, further improving the economics of the Company's 100% owned Boseto Copper Project". According to the report, the new mineral resource includes the Petra Prospect drilling results as released to the market since April 2007, when the last Petra Prospect Mineral Resource was announced. The Petra Prospect currently hosts the smallest of the three mineral resources making up the Boseto Copper Project, and now extends to the Plutus Prospect to create one continuous deposit extending for more than 10 kilometres of strike length. Mineralisation remains open at depth and to the south west of Petra for a further 13 kilometres based on drilling, soil geochemical anomalism, trenching and mapping. The company says that estimation and reporting of silver contained in Petra for the first time is expected to result in improved project economics compared to the prefeasibility base case outcomes.

Botswana economic situation

From Botswana economic report – April 2009, Capital Securities

HOORC Senior GIS Technician Masego Dhilwayo has alerted us to the latest economic report from Botswana company Capital Securities:

"As the impact of the credit crunch is beginning to show clearly, in Botswana the economic multipliers are so great that as diamond mining slides, the entire economy slides with it.
The graphs show clearly the dilemma for this export-led economy of 1.7m people. Imports are rising as diamond and copper-nickel exports decline. Non-diamond exports are up – they were 36% of the total over 2008 - but half of that was copper nickel. This is too slow a rate and improvement is unlikely in the present international and regional economic climate."


You can find the report online.

Mining licences for CKGR

The issuing of mining exploration licenses granted by the Botswana government for work in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve has been featured in various news reports. See Mmegi, the South Africa Mail and Guardian and AFP, with more background from MineWeb.

Diamond mining update

Mmegi has reported award of a contract by African Queen Mines, an exploratory resource company with diversified mineral properties in Southern Africa, to Botswana-based Discovery Drilling Africa for the first phase of a core-drilling programme on its Okavango diamond property. The Okavango property comprises three prospecting licences covering approximately 2592 km2 held by the Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, PAM Botswana (Pty.) Ltd. It is situated on a recently recognised extension of the Archaean Congo Craton, which hosts numerous economic kimberlite and alluvial diamond deposits.

What lies beneath? A case for sharing data: Massive Diamond Find Perplexes Jwaneng Planners

This a classic result of what happens when spatial data in a country is not shared, but is instead kept under lock and key in different government offices, private organisations.  Millions have been wasted on servicing land for residential development only to find that there are diamonds beneath as the Mmegi newspaper reports

Mmegi Mobile :: Massive Diamond Find Perplexes Jwaneng Planners

2009 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium

The the 2009 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 09) will be held at the University of Cape Town , South Africa, July 13th to 17th 2009. The African Association for Remote Sensing of the Environment (AARSE) and EIS-Africa, are partners in hosting the conference. Special themes of the meeting include:

GEOSS - 5 Years On
African micro-satellites – technical
African micro-satellites – applications
Ten years of MODIS Earth Observations
Assisting African Development Needs
Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and Radiance Data Assimilation
Ocean Synoptics and Weather
Human and Environmental Health
Baseline Climate Identification and Global Change
Remote Sensing Education
Radar-based Earth Observation – the Next Wave
Atmospheric chemistry from space
Marine resources of Africa – the Benguela Project
Forest resources of Africa
Earth Observation and Governance.
You can find out more on the conference web site.

Recent research from HOORC

Water resources management model for Okavango River Basin from Kiker, Munoz-Carpena, Wolski, Cathey, Gaughan and Kim article


Published results of research by HOORC staff and associates recently added to the HOORC Library catalogue cover a wide range of topics relevant to management of the Okavango.


A study reported in The effects of soil cover on soil respiration and microbial population in the mopane (colophospermum mopane) woodland of North Western Botswana by Mabiletswane P. Siele, Tabo Mubyana-John and HOORC ecologist Casper Bonyongo in Dynamic Soil, Dynamic Plant found that fungi contribute significantly to soil structure and respiration under mopane tree canopy.

HOORC Deputy Director Moses Chimbari and C.J. Shiff's investigation of the potential use of the fruit of Jatropha curcas to kill snails that transmit schistosomiasis, A laboratory assessment of the potential molluscicidal potency of Jatropha curcas aqueous extracts, was published in the African journal of aquatic science.

Incorporating uncertainty into adaptive, transboundary water challenges : a conceptual design for the Okavango River basin by Gregory A. Kiker, HOORC researcher Piotr Wolski and associates, published in the International journal of risk assessment and management, explores models for management of transboundary water issues in the Okavango River Basin.

HOORC researchers Philippa Huntsman-Mapila and Susan Ringrose joined associates Tiercelin, Benoit, Diskin, Cotten and Hemond in investigating the origins of the formation of the Okavango's alluvial fan, reported in the African journal of earth sciences, Sediment geochemistry and tectonic setting: application of discrimination diagrams to early stages of intracontinental rift evolution, with examples from the Okavango and Southern Tanganyika rift basins.

HOORC researchers Susan Ringrose, Philippa Huntsman-Mapila and Cornelis Vanderpost also contributed to a study of changes in sediments that sheds light on palaeo-environmental change in the Okavango, reported in Diagenesis in Okavango fan and adjacent dune deposits with implications for the reccord of palaeo-environmental change in Makgadikgadi - Okavango - Zambezi basin, northern Botswana in the journal Geomorphology.

HOORC associate Michael Heinl collaborated with Mike Murray-Hudson, Jan Sliva and Budzanani Tacheba to find that fire plays a secondary role to flooding in affecting vegetation structure and tree density in the Okavango floodplain, reported as The relevance of fire frequency for the floodplain vegetation of the Okavango Delta, Botswana in the African journal of ecology.

HOORC researchers Ketlhatlogile and Belda Mosepele worked with associates Peter Moyle, Glenn Merron and David Purkey to write Fish, floods, and ecosystem engineers : aquatic conservation in the Okavango Delta, Botswana in Bioscience, an argument for fisheries as a key issue when analysing environmental flows in the Delta.

Communicating integrated water resources management : from global discourse to local practice -- chronicling an experience from the Boteti River sub-Basin, Botswana by Larry Swatuk and HOORC researcher Moseki Motsholapheko, published in Physics and chemistry of the earth, reviews the challenges of influencing opinion and beliefs in the context of integrated water resources management.

The same issue of Physics and chemistry of the earth, edited by HOORC researcher Dominic Mazvimavi, featured an article by Mazvimavi and HOORC environmental chemist Wellington Masamba, Impact on water quality of land uses along Thamalakane - Boteti river : an outlet of the Okavango Delta, calling for increased monitoring of fluctuations in water quality of the rivers flowing from the Delta.

You can find all these resources in HOORC's Library.

Okavango new year news

Cloudy skies over Makgadikgadi Pans January 2009

The new year has begun in Ngamiland with thundershowers and a miscellany of news about the Okavango region. Local news at the end of the year and in the first week of 2009 included Mmegi's stories about Botswana's Geological Survey's Seismo-tectonic study of the Okavango Delta Region with the University of Botswana, the Ngamiland foot and mouth disease relief fund and the NewOpenWorld Foundation's inclusion of the Kalahari and Okavango Delta as candidates in the New 7 Wonders of Nature online contest, as well as an invitation to tender for hunting in the CH 1 and 2 areas by Chobe Enclave Conservation Trust and, in the Botswana Gazette, the Botswana Department of Tourism's notice about illegal tourism enterprises. The Angola Press reported on plans for the cross-border conservation area of Kavango-Zambezi -- see also an item on the Tourism ROI site.

At HOORC, upcoming seminars have been announced for January 15th at 09:00h:

Dr. Lapologang Magole: A tragedy of the commoners: Creating a lose-lose situation in the process of bargaining and negotiating access to Botswana’s grazing lands

Dr. Joseph Mbaiwa: Policy Challenges, opportunities and implications for Okavango Delta fishery in Botswana

Barbara N. Ngwenya, B. H. Cangas, N. Moleele: ‘Fishing’ for the inclusion of women in co-management structures of the Okavango Delta fishery: implications for biodiversity conservation in Botswana.

Presentations will be made in the HOORC Seminar Room: all are welcome.

Corporate responsibility in mining

Cattle on South African mine site by David Van Wyk

HOORC's Library has had a visit today from David Van Wyk, chief researcher at Bench-Marks Foundation in South Africa, a subsidiary organization of the South African Council of Churches. Mr Van Wyk is in Ngamiland to study the relationship between mines and local communities as part of a wider SADC study on corporate responsibility in the mining sector. Previous studies have focused on Malawi, Zambia and South Africa. Results of the current study, about Botswana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are expected to be published by June 2009. You can find Bench-Marks reports online and, in HOORC's Library, you can find Kenneth Good's Bushmen and diamonds: (un) civil society in Botswana.

New in HOORC's Library: Botswana's mineral accounts

Although mining is a critical sector of the economy in Botswana, the value of mineral wealth is not included in the asset accounts of the national economic accounts. National Resource Accounts correct this by estimating the economic value of the country's mineral assets and the cost of depleting minerals, providing policy makers with a more accurate picture of whether Botswana is living off its natural capital.

The recently published Towards mineral accounts for Botswana prepared for the Department of Environmental Affairs in association with the Centre for Applied Research, allows for mineral accounts to be used to add mineral capital to Botswana's traditional capital estimates. The report's analysis shows that, while minerals are the most important capital asset of the country, their share declined from 63 per cent in 1984 to 44 per cent in 1987, while other forms of capital increased. Calculations indicate that the minimum necessary to reinvest in only about 66 per cent of mineral rent, meaning the remaining 34 per cent could be used to fund expenditures on such items as poverty alleviation and improving renewable natural resources use.

You can find the report in HOORC's Library.

UB Seminar about Maun earthquake

Dr. J.G. King of the University of Botswana's Physics Department is presenting a seminar, Analysis of the August 16th 2008 Maun (Botswana) Earthquake at the University on Wednesday 12th of November 2008 starting at 1500hrs in Room 208/004. The presentation will include a briefing on the seismic data being collected mainly by Botswana Geological Survey and UB members in the Okavango region.

August earthquake in Ngamiland

Image from Google Earth

Several weeks ago an earth tremor rattled the house of HOORC Library Assistant Joseph Matshelo, among other Maun residents. Now data about the earthquake has been sent to us by Dr. A. Cichowicz of the South African Council for Geoscience, through Professor T.S. McCarthy of the University of the Witwatersrand Okavango Research Group. The earthquake of August 16th (20:21 GMT) had a magnitude of 4.4, and the epicentre was located at 20.033 deg S and 23.184 deg E, which puts it on the Kunyere fault at the junction of the Marophe and the Kunyere rivers (see Google image). In HOORC's Library, you can find the Encyclopedia of earthquakes and volcanoes.