Industrial Biodiversity 2 : Black River in Paarden Eiland
These pictures show a type of place which is known, in the trade, as a novel ecosystem. The original waterway, whatever it looked like, has been totally destroy...
Author: Les Underhill
Prof Les Underhill has been Director of the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town since it started in 1991. Although citizen science in biology is Les’s passion, his academic background is in mathematical statistics. He was awarded his PhD in abstract multivariate analyses in 1973 at UCT and what he likes to say about his PhD is that he solved a problem that no one has ever had. He soon grasped that this was not the field to which he wanted to devote his life, so he retrained himself as an applied statistician, solving real-world problems.
First draft of new generation maps for dragonflies and damselflies
The map below shows coverage for OdonataMAP. There are records for only 1,101 of the 2,014 grid cells of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. That’s a lit...
Biodiversity/BirdPix/Citizen Science/Karoo/LepiMAP/MammalMAP/News/OdonataMAP/Site report/Trip report/Virtual Museum
The BDI visits Roam Private Game Reserve
Five years ago, the Post family bought a 5000 ha property in the Karoo which had been used for hunting, turned it into a biodiversity conservation area, and ren...
Atlas maps: choice of grid scale
Traditionally, we have used the quarter-degree grid scale to generate distribution maps in biodiversity atlases. In southern Africa, this convention started wit...
Virtual Museum: open for refreshments!
As you drive your new car out of the showroom, its value drops dramatically, and then keeps on dropping. It’s not quite as bad with the Virtual Museum. Bu...
Quarter-degree-grid cells made simple
Lump it or leave it, quarter-degree-grid cells are entrenched in the mapping system of South Africa. In an article called “SA Mapsheet Referencing“,...
Exploring data: the median and the mean, and everything in between
Here is the assignment for this blog. “Write a report on the progress being made in the Western Cape by the BirdPix section of the Virtual Museum.” ...
Exploring data: The difference between data and an anecdote
If you only have one data point, then you have an “anecdote”. Like the photo below: The information we have is that of a single Chacma...
Virtual Museuming at Mwamba Conservation Centre, A Rocha Kenya
Mwamba is the Conservation Centre of A Rocha Kenya. It is on the coast, and offshore is the Watamu Marine National Park. Just inland is the Arabuko-Sokoke Fores...
… participating in a Tropical Biology Association course in Nairobi
It was a great privilege to be part of the team teaching at a course for the Tropical Biology Association in Nairobi during April. The course was called “...