Page 78 - KGR 2020-21 Annual Report

PRODUCTIVITY AND CYCLING

RESULTS

KPI 1 | HERBACEOUS PRODUCTIVITY

We continue to monitor the temporal changes of herbaceous productivity using remote sensing techniques namely
the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the MODIS Terra satellite which measures the active
photosynthetic leaf area of vegetation. The correlation of these indices to the grass biomass in non-woody regions
is especially useful in understanding the trend in vegetation production across the reserve and in the pre-planning
of management burns.

The specific aim, however, is to develop an understanding of how productivity is changing over time (in relation to
climate change for example) but also to characterise the spatial and temporal distribution of primary productivity in
the reserve. The annual pattern of greenness change over time has been extended back to 2012 (from 2014) and has
been captured every 16 days through the current reporting period. Based on this we can clearly see that the 2020/21
production season (plotted in green) sits well above the average (plotted in red) for every month from October 2020,
signalling the best production season on record.

0.7

Median and Range of Mean NDVI 0.5
0.6

0.4

0.3

Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Month

Mopani leaves at Karingani

C1 | 75 STRICTLY PRIV ATE AND CONFIDENTIAL