Water Wheel Jan/Feb 2023: Invasive Alien Plants

Abstract

New project aims to map alien invasive trees The WRC is funding a project which aims to map woody invasive alien plants and their impacts in four key strategic water source areas. Strategic water source areas are those which supply a disproportionately large amount of water relative to their area. Called MAPWAPS for short, this project was launched on 1 April 2022 and will run for three years until March 2025. The project aims to use freely available satellite imagery and cloud computing to map alien trees in some of the strategic water source areas that do not have recent information on biological invasions and their impact. The project team is led by Dr Alanna Rebelo of the Water Science Unit at the Agricultural Research Council – Natural Resources and Engineering, along with collaborators Profs Karen Esler and David Le Maitre of the Conservation Ecology and Entomology Department, Stellenbosch University, and an MSc and PhD student that will be trained on the project.

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