This course is an intensive field-based course located in Botswana's Okavango Delta, one of the world's hotspots of biodiversity and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Students will also take the course with students and staff from Arizona State University and Kings College London as part of the PLuS Alliance with UNSW. We will also have lectures from researchers from the Okavango River Institute, part of the University of Botswana. The Okavango Delta has extensive wetland systems with diverse waterbird populations, vegetation communities, the largest population of elephants in Africa and large predators, including lions and leopards. This diverse ecosystem lies at the end of one of the world's last few large free-flowing rivers. This course will involve non-government and government managers involved in practical concepts of river basin ecosystem conservation, management and governance. Students will acquire an advanced understanding of the politics, governance and management of river basin ecosystem science by unpacking the geopolitical constraints and considerations shaping the Delta's management. It receives most of its water from Angola with the Okavango River, which then flows through Namibia to Botswana. Participants will gain skills in field methods, ecosystem scale landscape analyses and their application to human/wildlife interactions. They will contribute to long-term collection of data for the management of the river basin. The overall aim of the course is to tackle a global challenge in a developing country of the world, focusing on sustainability of biological and abiotic processes within the context of human drivers of development. It uses the Okavango River Delta as a case study but compares this to Australian systems, particularly the Lake Eyre Basin. For more information, visit here.
This course involves compulsory field-work in Botswana. The field course costs and travel to and from Botswana is at the expense of individual students.This course will also have scheduled classes during the term. There is limited capacity in this course: preference will be given to high performing students in relevant Programs or Majors.
