Monde Rapiya (Ph.D. candidate)
I’m Rapiya Monde, a Ph.D. candidate in Pasture Science at the University of Pretoria. I obtained a Master of Science in Agriculture (Pasture Science) from the University of Fort Hare, which explored the effects of different grazing systems on forage production and seasonal parasitic loads in beef cattle. I published a paper from my MSc’s work in the African Journal of Range and Forage Science.
I’m extremely interested in natural rangelands, as the sustainability of rangeland management and conservation methods remains a major challenge in developing countries. This is due to a lack of knowledge, management skills, and finance. Hence, there is a great need to develop an accurate, cheap, and time-effective tool to evaluate rangeland conditions under any ecological conditions and establish effective, easy methods of conservation, restoration, and management of natural rangelands in South Africa.
Therefore, my current research interest is to develop short and long-term grass specific nutrient spatial distribution and mapping models in the natural rangeland of the Vaalwater region. Through measuring or estimating the vegetation formations (canopy cover), forage quantity (biomass and leaf area index) and quality (polyphenolics, chlorophyll content and nutrient composition) of extensive rangeland using integrated remote sensing and in-situ. This study will apply two integrated remote sensors: Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, and in-situ to map nutrient concentration for key savannah grass species. Many studies have highlighted that these two remote sensors are useful and reliable in rangeland assessment and monitoring. However, there are limiting factors associated with the use of remote sensing.
Few studies have been successfully conducted in evaluating and mapping the ability of new integrated remote sensing. They were only based on a long-term estimation model, not on the short-term model. Although, their dataset is being reported to be more accurate, free and easy to obtain and can be used in mapping the distribution of complex natural rangelands. Also, the data from this kind of remote sensing can be widely used for many decades in mapping and monitoring natural rangeland vegetation with no added costs. Hence there is a high need to do an exploratory study to investigate the practical effectiveness of Sentinel-1 and -2 in assessing biophysical and biochemical parameters.