The 4°G Challenge

4°G is a project of SABAP2 focused on the wider Gauteng Region. This project runs for the six month period from July to December 2010.

A key element of SABAP2 coverage is to get sufficient data for pentads or areas to establish trends in species diversity. In addition, the project is far better able to use existing data in poorly covered areas, if we have intensive coverage over a large area. One can then take a small sample, pretend it is poorly covered, and do analyses and interpolations, and see how much data roughly to get an approximation to the "truth" (ie what you get if the area is intensively covered).

The aim of this project is to get at least 4 atlas cards per pentad over the four degree squares which straddle Gauteng and parts of neighbouring provinces. The Project thus aims to increase coverage over Gauteng, large parts of North-west Province as well as areas in Free-State, Mpumalanga and Limpopo.

Previous mini projects have successfully focused on getting the whole of Gauteng “orange” (at least 2 cards per pentad). This project will team up committed Gauteng Atlasers with those resident in nearby parts of other provinces to establish a carpet of thorough coverage across the region.

Of course, we still want our atlasers to “go deep” and continue to atlas closer to home, but if you can commit to a few outings over the next few months to get to poorly covered areas within the four degree squares (2527, 2528, 2627, 2628) this will help to take SABAP2 substantially forward.

To see which pentads need attention you can use any of these four shortcuts to the “gap analysis”

At the start of the project (July 2010) there were 496 cards outstanding for 241 pentads. 496 cards is just 7 % of the total cards submitted for these 4 degree squares since the start of the project.

If this challenge proves a success, it will hopefully serve to ignite similar challenges around some of the other centres in South Africa.