I study how people shape landscapes and how landscapes shape us back.

A savanna rarely gives a simple answer. Across my field sites, areas that looked similar at first glance could tell very different stories once I slowed down: palatable grasses growing beneath thorny cover, bare patches near heavily used areas, dense sickle bush, or silver raisin appearing in some places and disappearing in others.

My field notes record these patterns area by area rather than forcing each farm into a single label. The goal is to understand ecological health as a mosaic shaped by soils, rainfall, animals, fencing, water points, and years of management decisions instead of making a quick judgment of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ land.

My undergraduate honors project began with 30 vegetation plots on one Limpopo game ranch. I measured forage palatability, shrub cover, canopy closure, and Silver Raisin abundance to understand vegetation quality and the intensity of bush encroachment. The results suggested that the ranch was broadly in good condition, but that woody thickening and lower quality forage appeared in localized patches.

That first study raised a larger question: what creates the ecological patterns visible on a farm? My master’s research now looks beyond land use categories alone to understand how property history, economics, risk, experience, environmental conditions, and changing opportunities influence the ways people manage land. By placing field observations alongside land managers’ accounts, I am tracing how those decisions accumulate across a landscape over time.

Fieldwork is never as tidy as the methods section makes it sound. Access changes, vegetation blocks a route, farms vary dramatically in size, and the most revealing area may not fall inside a perfectly spaced grid. My current approach combines rapid appraisal with opportunistic sampling so I can document meaningful ecological contrasts while staying consistent about what I observe.

For every area, I record recurring indicators such as species composition, palatability, shrub and tree density, bare ground, erosion, canopy, and signs of livestock or wildlife. I then add the context that numbers alone can miss. These notes are observations in progress, not final results. Together, they form the bridge between what I saw in the veld and the analysis that will become my thesis.