South Africa
- Hluhluwe-iMfolozi National Park as the study site in South Africa. The South African partners contribute protected-area knowledge, HWC evidence, environmental analysis and policy perspectives to the wider GSRIT framework.
Research focus
The South African component is aligned with the same integrated questions used across the project:
- How do climate and land-use changes influence HWC drivers?
- Which ecological and socio-economic variables are most useful for risk mapping?
- How can policy and governance information be incorporated into geospatial decision support?
- Which indicators can be compared across different African landscapes, and which require local adaptation?
Kenya
TSAVO CONSERVATION AREA, KENYA
Why Tsavo?
Tsavo is a major conservation landscape where wildlife, pastoral and agricultural livelihoods, settlements, climate variability and limited water resources interact. This makes it an important setting for studying how ecological stress and human pressures translate into HWC risk.
Data foundation
The GSRIT team compiled and digitized historical HWC records covering 1995–2023 (28 years). The project presentation reports more than 37,900 HWC incidents in this historical dataset. Recorded conflict types include crop raiding, human attacks, livestock predation, property damage and accidents.
Climate and land-cover analysis
The Tsavo work combines HWC records with precipitation, temperature, vegetation and land-cover information. The current climate analysis applies SPI, VCI, elevation and Random Forest modelling to classify drought and wetness conditions from 2000–2024. The project also uses Landsat and Sentinel-2 to map changes in vegetation, agriculture, settlements, water bodies and bare land.
Preliminary project findings
- Climate-related stressors such as drought, rainfall variability, vegetation stress and water scarcity are important for interpreting wildlife movement and conflict patterns.
- The project has identified several major dry and wet years that provide a climate-risk baseline for ongoing HWC analysis.
- Elephants are the dominant species in the historical Tsavo conflict records presented by the project team.
- Risk-zone mapping is being refined by linking georeferenced incidents with environmental and land-use information.
Botswana
OKAVANGO DELTA, BOTSWANA
A dynamic human–wildlife landscape
The Okavango Delta is a biodiversity-rich inland delta shaped by strong seasonal hydrological and climatic variability. Human–wildlife conflict is unevenly distributed across Botswana, with important hotspots in northern districts and around protected areas and wildlife corridors.
Land-use and ecological change
GSRIT has used Landsat imagery and other datasets to examine land-use/land-cover change in the Okavango Delta, including classifications for 2001, 2013 and 2023. Project analysis indicates growth of agricultural land and settlements, even where their overall spatial share remains relatively small.
The Botswana component also evaluates ecological indicators including NDVI, MNDWI, land-surface temperature and the Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI), together with HWC records.
Preliminary project observations
- Human activities are expanding within parts of the broader landscape.
- Seasonal reductions in water availability can push wildlife toward locations also used by settlements and agriculture.
- Project analysis indicates seasonal HWC peaks around the end of the rainy season and during the dry season.
- The project has explored relationships between ecological condition (RSEI) and herbivore/carnivore HWC records.