DRKS311 Ecology Projects
Senior researcher: Prof Wynand Malherbe
Rationale
METSI has frequently been used for DRKS311 Ecology projects and is necessary to build a database and compare data with previous data from the Mooi River and Gerhard Minnebron. This data will provide more information on the water quality of the Mooi River catchment, while the facility will provide the space for valuable training and capacity building for the students.
This training program focusses on water quality, aquatic macroinvertebrates as well as fish within the Mooi River system. METSI provides three sampling points, whilst other sampling points are sampled upstream of METSI in the Mooi River and Wonderfontein Spruit. The obtained data feeds into a database of water quality within the Mooi River for the last 5 – 10 years.
Objectives
- Collection of water quality data
- Collection of habitat data relating to flow, substrate and depth
- Collection of macroinvertebrates from the Mooi River and Gerhard Minnebron
- Data analysis of macroinvertebrate communities in comparison with the long term macroinvertebrate community structure trends.
- Capturing of data in the long term database of the Mooi River.
Expected outcomes
- It is expected that the data generated as part of this project will contribute to the long-term monitoring of the water quality and aquatic and terrestrial fauna community of the Mooi River and Gerhardminnebron systems.
- Insights into the effects of artificial light at night on aquatic and terrestrial fauna of the North-West Province
- Written reports of the findings of the study will be produced
- Student training in the fields of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem health and ecology
Benefit to interdisciplinary objectives of the UESM
This work is interdisciplinary as students and researchers from both the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Aquatic Ecosystem Health (AEH) program will be working together to look at the status of terrestrial and aquatic biota of the Mooi River system.
Project status
In progress
No preliminary results available yet.