Dataset extent

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Overview of the Agricultural Natural Resources of South Africa (2005)

The purpose of this report is to take stock of available information on the agricultural natural resource base of South Africa. The perspective was a national one, with emphasis on spatial information. The report is to serve as an information base for identifying threats and opportunities related to land use and management.

The reader is requested to bear in mind that the current picture is far from complete. The aim was to collate the available spatial information at national scale that may be considered meaningful and present it in one volume. The aim was thus not to attempt to generate information that might be considered lacking but to display what is available, whatever the shortcomings might be. Issues that were adequately addressed in easily traceable existing publications, e.g. the Agrohydrology Atlas by Schulze (1997) generally were not duplicated. Implied by this approach is the possibility of subjectivity from the side of the compilers and the DoA project leaders. Sincere apologies are tendered for any erring in that respect.

The report is organized in two parts. Part One contains baseline information. Part Two considers some of the pressures on land. This distinction is rather arbitrary. Former homelands, for example, were a pressure once and may now be conisidered part of the baseline. Hoffman (1999), in following UNCCD, used a completely different conceptual framework for the National Review of Land Degradation in South Africa.

In the present approach, climate is regarded as part of the biophysical baseline on which human activities impact. One might ask what the relation is between this report and the much more comprehensive Hoffman report. This report zooms in on and, hopefully, strengthens the land attribute baseline against which changes can be assessed.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Email vanderlaanm@arc.agric.za
Authors
Author 1
Author first name
JL
Author surname
Schoeman
Email
Not available
Author organization
Agricultural Research Council
Department
Is this author a contact person for the dataset?
true
Contact person
Contact 1
Contact name
Michael van der Laan
Email
vanderlaanm@arc.agric.za
Contact organization
Agricultural Research Council
Department
Water Science
Recommended citation
Did the author / contact organization collect the data? true
Name of organization that collected the data Agricultural Research Council
Dataset language English
Publisher Department of Agriculture
Publication date 2005-12-31
Project number Not provided.
License Open (Creative commons)
License URL Not available
Keywords Climate, Geology, Terrain, Soil, Soils with special management requirements, Soils with beneficial physical attributes, Natural fertility, Vegetation, Other land categories, Pressures on land - population
Geographic location or bounding box coordinates
Topic category Agriculture
Data structure category Semi-structured (does not fully conform to the tabular format of structured data, but may contain tags or markers identifying properties to arrange it into an organisational framework)
Uploader estimation of extent to which data have been processed Access
Is the data time series or static Static
Data reference date
Data reference date 1
Data reference date (from)
2005-01-01
Data reference date (to)
2005-03-11
Alternate identifier None
Vertical extent datum masl
Vertical minimum-maximum extent
Vertical minimum-maximum extent 1
Minimum vertical extent
0
Maximum vertical extent
3450
I agree to the data management plan and terms and conditions of the WRO true