A strong contingent of staff, students, former students, and extra research associates from the Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology recently attended the National Wetlands Indaba 2025, held under the theme Wetlands and People.

The Indaba, which serves as a key platform for wetland researchers and practitioners across South Africa, showcased the department's research in wetland monitoring using geospatial methods. The highlight of the event was the achievement of MSc Geoinformatics candidate Nkosingizwile Ndlovu, who won the prize for the best student poster presentation. Her winning poster covered her Master's work on A Sentinel-1 based framework for monitoring lacustrine wetland hydroperiods in support of SDG 6.6.1a and biodiversity conservation in groundwater-dependent systems.

The department contributed to the Indaba with a range of presentations covering advanced geospatial techniques for wetland monitoring.

• Nkosingizwile Ndlovu (MSc Geoinformatics candidate) - best student poster prize winner.

• Regina Mabokchaba (MSc Geoinformatics candidate) presented her Master's research on employing multi-scale imagery for vegetation community mapping: a pixel- and object-based classification evaluation.

• Lukho Goso (recent MSc Geoinformatics graduate) presented on her Master's work on the geospatial assessment of range-restricted African River Ecosystem Types (ARETs).

• Dr. Christel Hansen (Senior Lecturer in Geoinformatics), as supervisor of the students who presented and colleague of Dr van Deventer.

• Dr. Heidi van Deventer (Research Associate and CSIR Researcher) delivered two presentations, one introducing a new initiative EO4wetlands: a new NRF-Funded project to improve wetland monitoring in South Africa’s grassland and savanna biomes and another on the biodiversity typing of South African springs at country-wide and global scales for reporting to the Global Biodiversity Framework.

The Department extends its congratulations to Nkosingizwile for winning the prize for the best student poster presentation, and commends all attendees for representing the university and its commitment to vital wetland research.

More information on the event can be found on the official website: https://nationalwetlandsindaba.org/.