Biodiversity Survey of the Cape

A NASA Biodiversity field campaign in the Greater Cape Floristic Region of South Africa

The Greater Cape Floristic Region will be mapped from space! Scientists from the US and South Africa, with the assistance of NASA, are embarking on a campaign to map the abundant biodiversity of the Greater Cape Floristic Region. It is the only biome to be contained within a single country in the world.

Technology will be used to collect remotely sensed data which will be combined with existing and new observations of the spatial distribution of species, ecosystems, “and their traits to enable high-resolution mapping of biodiversity, functional traits, and three-dimensional structure across environmental gradients and times-since-disturbance”. BioSCape

Find out more about the initiative, visit BioSCape

The campaign is organized around three major themes aimed at understanding:

1.        the distribution and abundance of biodiversity,

2.        the role of biodiversity in ecosystem function, and

3.        the impacts of biodiversity change on ecosystem services.

“By mapping this, the hope is to show the important link between ecosystems that people depend on with the flora in the region.” GetAway article

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King Protea

Photo credit: B Thomas