Nine Honours students from the Department recently went to Swaziland for a four-day applied geomorphology field trip led by Prof Heinz Beckendal and Andre Theron. A wide range of sites were visited with a particular focus on sites where the impact of humans as geomorphic agents is clear as well as areas where geomorphic knowledge can be used to explain landforms or assist in remediation and mitigation of disturbed landscapes. The trip exposed students to a wide variety of landscapes and processes and provided hands on experience with geomorphic research in the context of the Southern African socio-economic environment. The students were responsible for writing field reports and will be presenting their findings.
Sites visited included:
- The springs wetlands and their contamination due to the early gold mining as well as current challenges related to dolomite instability and human settlements in polluted environments.
- The Witbank coal fields and resulting disturbed landscapes.
- The Chrissiesmeer lake district and the factors controlling wetland formation, their characteristics and conservation.
- The Sandlane structural sandstone valley.
- The Ngwenya Iron mine, its colonial history and the impacts on the people of Swaziland as well as challenges related to resources economics, mine closure and slope stability.
- Bioremediation of eroded slopes and slope stabilisation using locally grown vetiver grass. Other advantages of the grass were also discussed, including its suitability for weaving to aid poverty alleviation and its pest deterrent characteristics useful for subsistence farming.
- Erosion control and factors to consider during road construction on hill slopes.
- Lessons learnt from using gabions for mitigating and remediation gully erosion.
- Hands on peat core sampling for radiometric dating to aid in reconstructing past climates and conserving current wetlands. This was part of the larger ARC-UP-UNISWA project. After some work we extracted the samples, transferred them over the border and delivered them to the ARC in Pretoria the next day, just in time to be flown to the Netherlands for radiometric dating.
- The Barberton geotrail, were some of the oldest rocks on earth is found.
- Geo-tourism and its impacts at the Sudwala cave system as well as karst processes and their relevance to the Gauteng sinkhole problem.
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