A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Science. Johannesburg, August 2016. / Resource selection by herbivores is driven by processes operating across a multitude of spatial scales and is influenced by a variety of biotic and abiotic environmental conditions and resources across the landscape. Spatial scales levels are crucial in habitat selection studies because they affect the interpretation of results and what may appear important at one level may not be relevant at another. Decisions made by animals at these levels can influence animal movements and hence the spatial distribution of populations. In this way, the use of resources across different scales by individual and groups of animals can be linked to population performance as a whole. Within home ranges, habitat use is mostly influenced by variation of food resources and water availability together with competition and predation risk. The study aimed to determine sable home range extent and habitat use and to test how predation, competition and other environmental factors influenced the selection of areas within these home ranges, in the thriving sable population of the Gorongosa National Park (GNP), Mozambique. Two adult females, one per herd, were fitted with GPS collar providing 5 hours interval GPS coordinates over a year, which were used to determine the annual and seasonal home ranges extents. Home ranges were then overlaid with vegetation map to analyse habitat use. Contrary to expectation, sable home ranges in this study were larger than those found in previous studies. The herds did not limit their habitat use to woodlands, using also open grasslands, drainage lines and bottomlands that retained green grasses during the dry season. Both herds expanded their ranges during the dry season, searching for those areas that still retained green grasses and searching for remaining water sources. For the resources selection within home ranges, I used the same GPS collar coordinates to fit seasonal logistic regression models with biotic factors (predation risk and competition) and with environmental variables (distance from water, distance from roads, elevation, slope, NDVI, vegetation types and landscape). Results show that sable were less prevalent in areas with high predation risk, but herds differed in prevalence with competitors, one herd favouring areas with high reedbuck concentrations and the other favouring low concentrations. Effects of environmental variables were different between seasons and between herds, being distance from water, distance from roads, greenness and elevation the most influential environmental. Both herds, however, avoided low elevation areas during the wet season, probably in order to avoid areas flooded during this period. As conclusion, predation risk and competition influenced selection within home ranges by sable in the GNP, despite low densities of potential competitors and lions. Nevertheless, this influence seems to not be enough yet to limit the success of the population. The herds also showed evidences of being affected by dry season, as demonstrated by the home ranges expansions during this period. With increase of herbivores population other that sable, and consequently increase competition and decrease of availability of resources, this could lead to reduction of growths percentages of the sable population in the park in the future. / MT2018

Gorongosa: a history of an African landscape, 1921-2014, focuses on changes in the Gorongosa ecosystem, in central Mozambique, southeastern Africa. Environmental changes result from natural, non-human causes and from the activities of humans. I describe four socioecological events: African and Portuguese interactions, Gorongosa National Park, the effects of Mozambique’s civil war, and the Park's restoration in the aftermath of the civil war. Prior to European partition of Africa in 1884-85, Mozambique did not exist as clearly a demarcated territory as it is now. Today, the sense of Mozambicanhood bears traces of Portuguese colonial era experience. The demarcation of Mozambique’s boundaries and the reshaping of the colony until 1975 was a painful process that both the Africans and Portuguese colonialists endured; these physical and social separations from the rest of southern Africa represented the first human-induced changes in southern Africa. The endeavors to reshape Mozambique did not end with political boundaries. Painful processes, including the reshaping of Gorongosa National Park in the Gorongosa ecosystem, continued after border demarcations. Countless Mozambican and Portuguese lives were lost in the long trajectory within the colony as the Africans and the Europeans all developed a sense of unity in diversity while reshaping their attitude of and about Mozambique. After independence in 1975, internal transformations and wars continued reshaping Mozambique and Mozambicans, as different nationalists sought to maintain their colonial experience. These dynamics marked the environmental history of the Mozambican and Portuguese peoples and are often reflected in the prevalence of high sympathy, which the two peoples share toward one another. Gorongosa: a history of an African landscape, 1921-2014, critically celebrates these collective achievements.

A holistic evolutionary approach is used in the Gorongosa thesis in which emphasis is on the salient reciprocal relations and kinetic succession of land surfaces and biotic communities, influenced by landscape processes and prime mover components. As correlations of these relations and processes require both a total interacting framework and the details of its prime components, the thesis is divided into three main parts: (1) synopsis of the essence of the Gorongosa ecosystem and the approach used in field ecology (Perspective); (2) correlation of the physical and living components of the ecosystem; and (3) synthesis. The study attempts to relate the salient features of processes and correlations into a co-evolutionary whole, caught at that particular stage in space and time by the study. The chapter titled Process and Response is the central pivot of the thesis combining the kinetic aspects of geomorphological landscape changes with co-evolutionary sequences of biotic communities which change (expand, contract, and recombine) kaleidoscopically in space and time, in appearance and content. The prime movers in ecosystem change are on the physical side, nickpoint headward eroding sequences and edaphic change in soil moisture balance, and on the biotic side, the frugivores and large ungulate components which affect geomorphic and habitat modification are central. Of these, soil moisture appears to be the master factor. All climatic influences too, appear to be expressed through the edaphic controls which change in-situ, or with each geomorphic surface replacement sequence. This factor seems to orchestrate the opportunities and constraints from below on the possible community evolution possible in a particular time and place. From this, a template of salient factors of the Gorongosa ecosystem is provided for management, based on causes and trends in the kinetic evolution of the various ecosystems. To maintain a diversity of ecosystems in Gorongosa, the fundamental management action is to reinforce or reinstate the natural local base level sills which cause ponding of floodwaters responsible for the mosaic of grasslands and slack marshes of high primary productivity and ungulate carrying capacity. Concomittantly reductions of certain overpopulated ungulate species, chiefly hippo, are required so that management is effective. As natural processes are dynamic, it is necessary to identify and evaluate those salient factors operating at a particular time, as these key controls are altered and replaced by others through natural kinetic succession of landscapes and biotic communities. The salient factors governing the dynamics of an ecosystem or community thus require to be mapped at intervals, to provide templates of the trends and changing importance of key and master factors, in order to anticipate or predict what will result from their influences. With these data valid evaluation can be made with the other correlated information for meaningful management action. / Thesis (DSc)--University of Pretoria, 1977. / Zoology and Entomology / unrestricted