Designing sustainable land management concepts depends on the availability of appropriate information on ecosystem services, which in turn are linked to ecosystem resources and their associated changes over time. Subproject SP09.1 aims at integrating spatial and non-spatial information to provide spatially explicit data products to support land managers and policy makers.

In particular, this project aims at addressing some of the most relevant information gaps, such as an inventory and mapping of land use and vegetation systems for the complete Okavango catchment, the spatially explicit characterization of specific ecosystem properties and the analysis of land use change dynamics in the context of conflicting claims on resources. These overarching goals will be pursued in the frame of 4 major tasks .

1. Employing time series of satellite images with high temporal resolution, such as the MODIS system, phenology indicators will be analyzed to characterize major land use systems and functional vegetation types. This information will be coupled with climate data to provide unbiased assessments of ecosystem productivity. These data will supply valuable baseline information covering the full Okavango catchment.
   
   



2. The baseline provided by task 1 will be complemented by more focused studies assessing land use and land cover change dynamics in representative target areas in Angola, Namibia and Botswana. These studies will deliver detailed land use maps to other subprojects and develop specific information products by integrating remote sensing based indicators with information collected in other sub-projects. These include both biophysical as well as socio-economic information in order to delineate dynamics in coupled social-ecological systems. One aspect of particular importance in this context is to contribute to the conservation of the Miombo woodlands in the region, which are listed as one of the global tipping point regions for biodiversity.



3. Given current climate change scenarios, carbon sequestration remains one of the most urgent issues in land management. In this context, the woodland and forest areas of the Okavango catchment are an important resource, and a detailed inventory is considered essential to map timber resources and provide support to REDD programmes. The development of a spatially-adaptive strategy to integrate remote sensing information with ground based inventory data and the implementation of carbon bookkeeping models will provide the required spatial information products to contribute to these objectives.



4. The Delta region of the Okavango catchment is a prominent example of conflicts between wildlife conservation and livestock management. Subproject SP09.1 aims at providing management concepts that reconcile the two aspects. One particular constraint is the veterinary cordon fence that restricts opportunistic movement of animals in relation to forage location. Here, we intend to use satellite imagery to track seasonal forage availability and link this with information on animal movement patterns recorded with GPS and forage quality analyses. The integration of these multiple information sources will enable the quantification of grazing gradients and the design of more flexible concepts to use available ecosystem services for both, livestock and wildlife.