Trees in South African Agriculture

This book provides a synthesis of the joined German-South African research project FarmImpact—Development of Sustainable Water Solutions for Farms in South Africa.
The FarmImpact concept is aiming to grow hedges for water-efficient agricultural, wine, and fruit products and to increase productivity. This includes the design of a water-efficient agricultural practice to improve crop water use through windbreak hedges, including improved tree selection and a technological part for predicting irrigation needs. The research approach lies in the intelligent combination of networked microclimatic measurements, drone-based remote sensing, and ecophysiological modeling. In wind field modeling addition, the objective of increasing soil fertility, reducing soil erosion, and providing additional ecological services is being pursued through integrated landscape measures.
This book is aimed at students, teachers, and scientists in the fields of agriculture, forestry and terrestrial ecology, environmental, nature and landscape planning, environmental resource management, as well as scientists and representatives in specialized authorities and associations, and policymakers of related disciplines.

Dr. Maik Veste is biologist by education. He studied biology, zoology, botany and biochemistry at the University of Münster. He received his Diploma in biology from the Department of Ecology at Münster University and his PhD in plant ecophysiology from the University of Hohenheim. His research fields include botany, ecophysiology, plant biogeochemistry, and vegetation-climate interactions of the biogeosphere. He conducted various extensive ecological field studies in the South African agricultural landscapes, fynbos and Karoo in the last 35 years. He was guest scientist at various departments of Stellenbosch University for many years. He is editor of various Springer books on agroforestry, drylands, land-use and climate change.
Dr. Elmi Lötze was a senior lecturer at the Faculty of AgriSciences, Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Her research focused on the role of nutrition, root growth dynamics and climate on fruit yield and quality, resulting in several post graduate students and peer reviewed papers. She also served as chairman of the ISHS Workgroup on Mineral Nutrition of Fruit Crops. At present, she is the Head of ITEST™ CARBOHYDRATES and ITEST™ LEAF at Agri Technovation and responsible for the development of carbohydrate analysis as a physiological indicator of plant performance in various crops.
Privatdozent Dr. Thomas Littmann studied geography, completed his habilitation in the field of physical geography at the Ruhr University of Bochum, and is affiliated as Privatdozent with the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He has led numerous research projects on climatology and environmental research during his academic career. Before founding DLC, he was head of site assessment at a leading German company in the wind energy sector. Presently he is CEO at DLC-Dr. Littmann Consulting, an international consultancy for energy yield studies and scientific applications in the fields of wind and solar energy.