A growing trend to focus on sustainability concerns in research and education is supported by a range of awareness-raising ‘green’ events at Rhodes University.
Term 1 includes an Enviro Film Fest – with movies designed to both challenge and entertain – which will be rerun in April during SRC Environmental Week.
A growing trend to focus on sustainability concerns in research and education is supported by a range of awareness-raising ‘green’ events at Rhodes University.
Term 1 includes an Enviro Film Fest – with movies designed to both challenge and entertain – which will be rerun in April during SRC Environmental Week.
Other events on the calendar include World Water Week, Arbor Week and RU Saving the Rhino.
Watch this space for the highlight on the events calendar, the colourful and charismatic annual Green Fund Run on Sunday 17 March.
For more info, visit: www.ru.ac.za/environment/events.
Cooperative water management in 2013
The Institute for Water Research at RU is certainly putting the UN’s theme of “International Year of Water Co-operation” into practice.
The IWR open day on 31 January will focus on “Water and Development in the Makana Municipality”.
Prof Hughes will introduce the systems approach to water services and Prof Palmer will speak on trans-disciplinary approaches to water management.
Jai Clifford-Holmes, Roman Tandlich and Sukh Mantel will discuss alternative and supplementary sources as potential solutions to increased water demand.
Other concerns under the spotlight include the environmental effects of water quality (Jacobs and Odume), wastewater treatment infrastructure and approaches (EBRU), citizen participation using mobile phones (Thinyane and Coulson), and research that informs management practices (Cundill).
Makana Municipality’s Director of Technical and Infrastructural Services (ET Myalato) will give the closing address. A very worthwhile event.
For more info, visit www.ru.ac.za/iwr or call 046 603 8334.
Looking back at 2012 rainfall
Some of the Grahamstown Wetwatchers – volunteers who share weekly rainfall records with Grocott’s Mail – shared their 2012 rainfall summaries for ME-News.
The full summary table is available here.
Roger Rowswell, in the wettest sector of Grahamstown (Darling Street), noted that we enjoyed a higher than average rainfall in 2012, thanks mainly to a new rainfall record set in the month of October.
He found that four months in 2012 were below the median (monthly range), three months approximately equal to it, and five months above the median.
The total of 913mm – over 123 rain days – was far higher than his 27-year median of 612mm. Rowswell explained that “the median is determined by arranging the rainfall data, month by month, in increasing or descending order, and the middle figure… of [each period]is taken as the median”.
He added that “the median gives a better indication of probability of being repeated than an arithmetic average”.
At Park Road, Jim Cambray also recorded the median/ monthly range, as well as average figures, with a total of 902mm for 2012, also significantly higher than his 27-year median of 654 mm.
Cambray imagined what would happen “… if we had all the lows in any one year: we would have an annual rainfall of only 103mm… but if we had all the highs we would have had 2 344 mm” – a frightening prospect!
Robin Stobbs, reporting from the driest sector of town (Grant Street), recorded a total of 811 mm (over 96 rain days) in 2012, which was much higher than his 38-year median of 640 mm.
He agrees that providing median figures “gives a better picture of just how variable our rainfall is and how unreliable predictions based on averages can be for Grahamstown”.
Contacts for Makana Enviro-News:
Nikki Köhly: n.kohly@ru.ac.za, 046 603 7205 | Nick Hamer: n.hamer@ru.ac.za, 084 722 3458 | Jenny Gon: j-gon@intekom.co.za, 046 622 5822 | Nick James: nickjames@intekom.co.za, 082 575 9781 | Strato Copteros strato@iafrica.com, 082 785 6403 | Philip Machanick p.machanick@ru.ac.za, 046 603 8635
