Pamela Esterhuysen

In September 2024, reporter Chris Ndaliso wrote an article for The Witness, titled “Concern over condition of KZN Botanical Gardens’ Kingfisher Lake”. In this article, he wrote that the lake had been taken over by alien plants, was highly silted and that the bird diversity had declined, with only some Egyptian geese spotted. There was no sign of the water birds such as moorhens, cormorants, as well as herons and kingfishers. The water birds and other water animals, such as turtles and fish, require good quality water as they swim around to feed. The weeds and silting of the lake make normal feeding impossible as the food availability declines. Clearly, the lake was in terrible shape, with implications for the plant and animal species that rely on it. Cleaning this lake would be no easy or quick task…unless the public gets involved!

Ever heard of  Citizen Science? Citizen science is a form of public participation in scientific investigations, using an inquiry-based methodology, to collect and analyse data and contribute to solving the issue at hand. In this case, clean water! Clean water is safe water! Unfortunately, 13% of water nationally is not safe for human consumption. Given the extent of the issue, we need mass public participation! Indeed, there is a great need for local communities to get stuck in, with gumboots, gloves and heavy-duty plastic bags, and to help clean up the mess in our cities’ rivers.

A number of South African organisations have web-based platforms on which the concept of Citizen Science may be promoted, using a variety of tools which include crowd sourcing or observation-based biomonitoring. Results are evaluated and verified by an expert panel. Two Action Groups that use online mapping to provide a visual representation of the state of South Africa’s rivers through citizen science are, MiniSASS and WaterCAN. MiniSASS uses biomonitoring as a tool to assess the health of a freshwater system by looking at macroinvertebrates to arrive at a score for a particular site. The different groups of organisms are identified. Each group on the MiniSASS score card has a value. The sum of the values is divided by the number of groups to provide a score (refer to Image 1).

Image 1. How to score using MiniSASS.

The WaterCAN testing kit allows for the chemical testing of the water at that site, measuring phosphate levels, oxygen content to name a few of the tests. The results of such water testing at community level is then uploaded to the web-based platforms, as mentioned above. The outcome is we have public participation in scientific research, the school-learners use citizen science tools and there is generally an understanding of the importance of clean water or holding municipal bodies accountable.

My passion for participatory fieldwork goes back for as long as I have been teaching Geography. Currently I am a PhD student at the University of Pretoria, in the Faculty of Education, in the final stages of writing my doctoral thesis, in the Department of Humanities Education. My research has investigated the value of conducting local, place-based geographical fieldwork in secondary schools and the contribution that inquiry-based learning makes to the overall development of the metacognitive skills in this cohort of learners. Many of the case studies observed with the groups of learners have involved one or other aspect of Citizen Science. Their results have been uploaded onto MiniSASS and WaterCAN, allowing these school groups to contribute to solving the issue of river pollution.

In KwaZulu-Natal, there are many Action Groups and organisations reporting and motivating local communities to become more involved in maintaining the cleanliness of the city, and more specifically, monitoring the water quality of our rivers. Groups such as these operate in most of the towns, cities and metropolitan areas of the country. To name a few of the local groups in the Pietermaritzburg area: Duzi-uMngeni Conservation Trust (DUCT),  GroundTruth and UMngeni-uThukela Water. DUCT is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting sustainable freshwater conservation through a community-centred approach. One of the areas Groundtruth has been involved in is the co-development of various tools, initiatives, and engagement events regarding citizen science water resource monitoring.

uMngeni-uThukela Water is involved in community and schools outreach programmes, for example: through their Adopt-A-School Programme. In addition to those organisations, The Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) has championed active citizenship through their Eco-Schools’ environmental education programme, which includes using a miniSASS.

Many schools in the municipality are close to or within walking distance of the tributaries of the Msunduzi River, and with support from the above-mentioned organisations, could get involved with Citizen Science projects.

An important experiential or hands-on field activity for groups of learners is to get involved with monitoring the water quality of the many streams (tributaries) of their cities’ river systems. The local action groups mentioned above are always willing to assist in starting the monitoring process. A lead teacher from a school is also able to register a school group on MiniSASS. Various water quality results and photographs may be uploaded, as well as the GPS position. The results will be displayed on a web-based map showing the water quality by using a colour-coded crab symbol once the information is verified.

The secondary school group, which formed one of my case studies, used the water testing kits from WaterCAN. The biomonitoring score was obtained from using the MiniSASS sheets. Image 2 below shows the group’s second sample site in the Mkondeni industrial area, Local businesses in such areas are challenged to support a school by partnering with them to become involved as Citizen Scientists.

Image 2. A view along a tributary of the Blackborough Spruit, which joins the Msunduzi River.

The cohort of learners conducting the water quality testing at this site had to report that the water quality of the stream was in very poor condition after conducting their visual analysis, water quality testing and biomonitoring using the miniSASS scoring system. The MiniSASS score was less than 4.8 indicating a river in poor condition (Image 1).

Just pause and think: if every school in a city adopted a river spot and partnered with local businesses and the various Action Groups, as well as the online Citizen Science reporting platforms, we could soon make our rivers more sustainable, and the surrounding communities would be able to access clean water from the rivers. Are you ready to join hands and make an effort to promote healthy, sustainable rivers for all by promoting Citizen Science?

Acknowledgements

Photographs taken by the Author                                           

Amanda Thandeka Masilela

In many social contexts, I often notice that we ask each other questions like: “What do you do?”, “What is your research about?”, or “Which department are you in?”. These are such common icebreakers. More often than not, when I describe what I do, the response is: “That sounds so cool!”.

For context, I am a Master’s student in the Ocean and Atmosphere Sciences discipline at the University of Cape Town, within the Oceanography Department. Our department is small and not very popular, as often it is assumed that we only study marine animals, which is not the case. In fact, oceanography is the study of the oceans and the ways in which their different components interact, including but not limited to the movement and composition of water, the plants and animals, the air above, and the geology below. This naturally branches into various themes such as climate sciences, physical oceanography, marine and atmospheric biogeochemistry, polar research, numerical modelling, and ocean statistics and machine learning. Our department is incredibly diverse in the research that we do, but what we all have in common is that we either focus on the ocean, the atmosphere, or their intersection. As for myself, my research focuses solely on the atmosphere.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by weather presenters. How do they know what the weather will be like tomorrow or for the next 10 days? How are they able to inform us that this year we will experience a dry season; that floods are coming; or that there is a cold front on its way? What is this cold front that they are talking about? I had so many questions, and I had no idea which field would bring about clarity. It is miraculous how I applied to major in Ocean and Atmosphere Science for my undergraduate degree, not really sure what it was, or how it would actually be the path to getting answers. I just wanted to learn about the ocean as it felt unique and the possibility of going on a research vessel one day sounded surreal (which I was lucky enough to experience in my Honours year). My journey in the Ocean and Atmosphere Sciences has been deeply rewarding, from answering questions that sparked my curiosity as a child, to empowering me to contribute meaningful research.

In a nutshell, my study is about tracing and quantifying the transport of moisture towards the Berg-Olifants and Breede-Gouritz Catchments in the southwestern South Africa (Fig. 1). Put simply, winds are the main driver of water vapor air masses (hereafter referred to as  “water parcels”) as they circulate and travel in the atmosphere in different phases of the water cycle. Water parcels are influenced by the warming of water bodies, which increase evaporation adding more water parcels in the atmosphere. Conversely, as air cools with decreasing temperature, the amount of water vapor also decreases. The rising of warm air and descending of cool air happens on a large scale in the atmosphere due to the presence of warm and cold sections of the ocean called currents. The warm currents and inland regions are the major contributors to water parcels that can potentially aid in cloud formation, enhancing weather systems, and fuelling the continuous water circulation in the atmosphere.

How exactly did we trace water parcels in the atmosphere? By utilising the numerical Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model executed with the high resolution ERA5 reanalysis dataset. The HYSPLIT model can track backward (or forward) in time estimating the water parcels pathways and help determine their origin before arriving at the study region. Part of the results revealed that moisture tracked back from the southwestern South Africa originates as distant as the south Australian region; the western, central, and eastern South Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans; the Agulhas Current region; and from the southern African continental region (Namibia, Botswana, southern Zimbabwe, and southern Mozambique). Although the Berg-Olifants Catchment is a winter rainfall region and the Breede-Gouritz Catchment is an all-year round rainfall region, they illustrated similar moisture source routes.

With focus on a historical long term, as carried out in this study, prolonged deficiency (excess) in moisture in the atmosphere can potentially lead to persistent droughts (floods). Moisture can be influenced by wind patterns, differences in temperature, and earth’s landscape (mountains and valleys), among other things. Resultantly, not all moisture parcels traced back from their source regions arrive at the study domain. Understanding where moisture is coming from and where it is propelled to can help forecasters better understand current climate conditions, consequently helping the society to be better informed and prepared when regions become drier or more humid than usual.

While I am not a weather presenter (which still seems like an incredibly cool career!), I take pride in knowing that the work I am involved in contributes to a better understanding of the atmosphere. This journey continues to inspire me every day, as my knowledge grows, my list of questions becomes endless. Who would’ve imagined that diving into something so unfamiliar could be so deeply fulfilling?!

Figure 1: Map of the southwestern South Africa highlighting the positions of the Berg-Olifants Catchment (black outline) and the Breede-Gouritz Catchment (grey outline). The shading illustrates the difference in height above ground in meters.