Ecology of the past

South African research trip (part 3 of 3)

by Jelle Kraak

As part of my MSc Biological Sciences research project at the University of Amsterdam I  travelled to Africa, where I first presented the early findings of my research at the SASQUA congress (blog post 1) in Oudtshoorn (Western cape), before heading to the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (blog post 2). Here I met up with local experts and prepared for the upcoming fieldwork, which the previous parts of this blog series covered. Now, the time has come for the final and best part, about my fieldwork in the absolutely gorgeous Drakensberg mountains.

Aims: As the samples for my research had already been collected earlier by my supervisors Prof. Dr. Jemma Finch & Prof. Dr. Trevor Hill for the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, our initial goal was to collect various samples (charcoal, sediment cores, etc) for the next students. During my time at the university of Kwa-Zulu natal, however, we realized that it would be great to collect a bunch of C3 and C4 grass species, to extract phytoliths (amorphous silica particles formed in plant tissues) from, which would help with the interpretation of our data. This then became our new focus. To achieve this goal we visited the Drakensberg twice, one day trip in the weekend, and one trip with an overnight stay.

Day 1

After a night of utterly terrible sleep (I was alone on the AirBnB property, the gate did not lock due to the cold, and our dogs started barking at something (someone!?) at 2AM), I woke up at 6AM to get ready for the long day ahead of us. Jemma came to pick me up at the, bringing coffee with her, which I really appreciated. We then picked up Trevor at their place and began our drive towards the mountains.  I had not seen much of the landscape in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province, which turned out to be very compared to the Western Cape. Whereas the western cape had fynbos vegetation (very similar to the Mediterranean, KZN was more savanna like. There was grass everywhere the eye could see, except for the patches of spruce, planted by humans. Halfway through the drive the Drakensberg mountains came into view, which was stunning. We then drove through some small villages, until we finally arrived at the Berg.