Alterra, Wageningen UR created a software tool that contains a vast amount of ecological data about the Fynbos Biome, an area in South Africa the size of the Benelux countries that harbours some 9,000 plant varieties, of which two-thirds are endemic. It is one of the world’s hotspots of biodiversity. The tool is called SynBioSys.
Like the SynBioSys packages developed previously in the Netherlands, Europe and the South African Kruger National Park, SynBioSys Fynbos brings together information about the levels of plant varieties, vegetation types (ecosystems) and landscapes. “SynBioSys Fynbos enables users to query large datafiles in a simple manner and to carry out a number of different types of analyses,” according to John Janssen, researcher of Alterra’s Vegetation and Landscape Ecology team. “Through such analyses, in which the datafiles are linked with one another, new information comes up that can lead to new insights. We call it the ecoinformatica approach.”
This first full version of SynBioSys Fynbos includes a special module targeting the sustainable harvesting of wild rooibos, the plant used to make the well-known tea and which grows only in this south-western part of South Africa. “Sustainable use means that the variety is cultivated on a small scale and is harvested to a limited extent annually from the wild,” says Janssen. “This is in contrast to the large-scale plantations found here in the region. Farmers who work on a small scale get a good price for their rooibos tea, because of all kinds of certifications, such as ‘organic’ and ‘fair trade’,” says Janssen.
In South Africa, Alterra researchers gave a workshop for local people to teach them how to use the software program. The software will be used at the University of Stellenbosch for educational purposes. Further, a request is coming to expand the program to the Namaqualand region, which is a hotspot north of the Fynbos Biome.
In the coming years the program will be further developed, based in part on inputs provided by local users.