Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
04 January 2021 | Story Andre Damons | Photo Supplied
From left to right: Makashane Ntlhabo (PhD student at the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies), Dr Tascha Vos (Centre for Environmental Management) and Dr Stephanie Cawood (Centre for Gender and Africa Studies).

Two researchers from the University of the Free State (UFS) are studying how water quality could be used at informal heritage sites to measure the health of the sites. They are also aiming to test the workability of their Rapid Integrity Appraisal (RIA) bio-cultural screening model as a way to safeguard informal heritage sites and cultural heritage.

Dr Stephanie Cawood from the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies and Dr Tascha Vos from the Centre for Environmental Management,a limnologist with a doctorate in environmental management, hope to achieve wider application for the RIA model beyond the eastern Free State’s sacred sites and to consider the feasibility of RIA to inform the monitoring and management regimes of formal heritage sites as well.

This interdisciplinary research is unique and brings together the science of aquatic ecology (limnology) as well as the cultural and social human dynamics of heritage, pilgrimage and ritual and how they interact.

Sacred sites and places of pilgrimage

“In previous research, we documented a link between the environmental integrity and public health of informal heritage sites in the eastern Free State and the cultural heritage associated with these sites. They are considered sacred sites and places of pilgrimage and include various sacred valleys and caves in the Mohokare Valley in the eastern Free State along the South Africa-Lesotho border.

“We detected a cycle of risk between human, animal and ecological risk factors where water quality is representative of ecological risk and cultural practices associated with the intrinsic heritage of the sites. Based on this cycle of risk and conventional aquatic biomonitoring models, we developed a unique bio-cultural screening model called Rapid Integrity Appraisal specifically designed for the biomonitoring of informal heritage sites such as the eastern Free State sacred sites,” the two researchers explain.

Rapid Integrity Appraisal

According to Dr Cawood, who is very knowledgeable about pilgrimage movement in the Mohokare Valley and has conducted regular fieldwork trips to these sites from 2007-2010, RIA is a bio-cultural screening model to determine the need for intervention at informal heritage sites.

Says Dr Cawood: “Ideally, a complete bio-cultural screening model would include all existing bio-monitoring indices. However, in a country such as South Africa which has immense social challenges, the formal heritage sector is under-resourced. Resources are even scarcer for informal heritage management.”

Dr Vos says this means that the full spectrum of biomonitoring indices simply cannot be justified for informal heritage sites. Therefore, in the specific context of limited resources in terms of time, expertise and funding, a pragmatic view has to be taken to rapidly and efficiently assess the integrity of informal sites.

“We found certain analyses related to water quality more valuable for extrapolation than others and we conceptualised these parameters as forming the RIA model. The idea behind RIA was to find the most expedient and efficient mode to rapidly assess the integrity of a particular informal heritage site. RIA is not meant to be a comprehensive method but is rather aimed at collecting baseline data for immediate decision-making and the possible implementation of a full water-quality assessment, or perhaps a complete bio-cultural screening,” according to Dr Vos.

Great potential

They have recently been funded by the UFS for this interesting interdisciplinary project which started in 2018. They have already completed the fieldwork and are now left with the data analysis and interpretation and the writing of articles. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic negatively affected their progress in this regard, but they hope to finalise the project next year.

According to the researchers the project has great potential for application in heritage management anywhere, not only for the monitoring of informal heritage sites, but for poorly managed tourist sites that may be ecologically compromised.

News Archive

Water research aids decision making on national level
2015-05-25

Photo: Leonie Bolleurs

With water being a valuable and scarce resource in the central regions of South Africa, it is no wonder that the UFS has large interdisciplinary research projects focusing on the conservation of water, as well as the sustainable use of this essential element.

The hydropedology research of Prof Pieter le Roux from the Department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences and his team at the UFS focuses on Blue water. Blue water is of critical importance to global health as it is cleared by the soil and stored underground for slow release in marshes, rivers, and deep groundwater. The release of this water bridges the droughts between showers and rain seasons and can stretch over several months and even years. The principles established by Prof Le Roux, now finds application in ecohydrology, urban hydrology, forestry hydrology, and hydrological modelling.

The Department of Agricultural Economics is busy with three research projects for the Water Research Commission of South Africa, with an estimated total budget of R7 million. Prof Henry Jordaan from this department is conducting research on the water footprint of selected field and forage crops, and the food products derived from these crops. The aim is to assess the impact of producing the food products on the scarce freshwater resource to inform policy makers, water managers and water users towards the sustainable use of freshwater for food production.

With his research, Prof Bennie Grové, also from this department, focuses on economically optimising water and electricity use in irrigated agriculture. The first project aims to optimise the adoption of technology for irrigation practices and irrigation system should water allocations to farmers were to be decreased in a catchment because of insufficient freshwater supplies to meet the increasing demand due to the requirements of population growth, economic development and the environment.

In another project, Prof Grové aims to economically evaluate alternative electricity management strategies such as optimally designed irrigation systems and the adoption of new technology to mitigate the substantial increase in electricity costs that puts the profitability of irrigation farming under severe pressure.

Marinda Avenant and her team in the Centre for Environmental Management (CEM), has been involved in the biomonitoring of the Free State rivers, including the Caledon, Modder Riet and part of the Orange River, since 1999. Researchers from the CEM regularly measures the present state of the water quality, algae, riparian vegetation, macro-invertebrates and fish communities in these rivers in order to detect degradation in ecosystem integrity (health).

The CEM has recently completed a project where an interactive vulnerability map and screening-level monitoring protocol for assessing the potential environmental impact of unconventional gas mining by means of hydraulic fracturing was developed. These tools will aid decision making at national level by providing information on the environment’s vulnerability to unconventional gas mining.

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept