Carin Van Ginkel

• Cripsis Environment

This paper provides a description of the zooplankton and epiphytic diatom communities of permanent and temporary freshwater pans in the Mpumalanga Highveld region of South Africa. Few studies have investigated the biota of pans in this area, which is seriously threatened by mining and agricultural development. Nineteen pan sites within a 20 km radi...

This paper provides a description of the zooplankton and epiphytic diatom communities of permanent and temporary freshwater pans in the Mpumalanga Highveld region of South Africa. Few studies have investigated the biota of pans in this area, which is seriously threatened by mining and agricultural development. Nineteen pan sites within a 20 kmradiu...

Algal species commonly occur in thermophilic environments and appear to have very wide geographical distributions. Presence of algal species is strongly influenced by temperature, pH and mineral content of thermal waters. No research has previously been documented on the algal diversity in South African thermal springs. This paper describes the alg...

The Mooi River catchment, in particular the Wonderfonteinspruit (WFS), has been the subject of a large number of studies regarding significant pollution sources, generally attributed to mining in the area. However, very little is known about the hydrochemistry of the surface water of the Klerkskraal, Boskop and Potchefstroom Dams in the Mooi River...

The quality of South Africa’s water resources is becoming increasingly impaired by eutrophication, to the extent that regional crises now prevail. Thirty-five percent of the total storage is eutrophic to hypertrophic – including grosslyenriched reservoirs that far exceed the globally-accepted definition of hypertrophy. Failing infrastructure contri...

A brief history of South African research on and management of algae-, phytoplankton- and eutrophication-related problems is presented, including their ecological, social and economic impacts, which provides a basis for formulation of future research needs. The contributions of southern African research on different groups of algae and cyanobacteri...

During the past 40 years, eutrophication has become an increasing threat to the usability of South African freshwater resources. Despite legislation moderating the discharge of phosphorus from some wastewater treatment works since the 1980s, eutrophication of freshwater resources is now widespread. Two important consequences are blooms of cyanobact...

The 1 mg/l phosphate effluent standard legislated in South Africa in 1980 in seven sensitive catchments, and ad hoc eutrophication-related requests, necessitated the monitoring of 53 impoundments throughout the country. Variables that were monitored, and are still being monitored in some cases, included nutrients, chlorophyll a, algal identificatio...

Generic models are required to share models for the same category of ecosystems in order to facilitate comparative scenario analyses and forecasting, and classify ecosystem health. However, generality is the most often neglected one of the three criteria for model validation: reality, precision and generality.The paper suggests to validate models f...

The occurrence of large blooms of Dinoflagellates composed primarily of Ceratium hirundinella, in hypertrophic reservoirs in South Africa has become more pronounced since 1999. The financial and operational impact of these blooms on the drink - ing water industry is high as this species produces bad tastes and odours and clogs filters. In order to...

Eutrophication, phytoplankton blooms and changes to the phytoplankton composition are some of the problems facing the managers of Hartbeespoort Dam and Roodeplaat Dam. Trends, both decreasing and increasing, are visible in the phosphorus concentrations, temperatures, dissolved oxygen concentrations and chlorophyll a concentrations in the water of t...

During the late winter to early spring of 1999 Ceratium hirundinella was recorded for the first time in the Hartbeespoort Dam, South Africa, and in bloom forming conditions. The C. hirundinella bloom started in July 1999 after complete mixing occurred and a Microcystis aeruginosa bloom disappeared. C. hirundinella occurred in chlorophyll a concentr...

The introduction of an intensive monitoring programme by the Hydrological Research Institute in 1986 and the subsequent increase in samples collected, caused a backlog to develop in the zooplankton laboratory. The traditional method of identifying and counting zooplankton populations is to use a low-powered microscope in conjunction with a counting...

The increasing threat of faecal pollution of water resources and the associated serious health risks posed to water users as well as the lack of any coherent information on the status of the microbial water quality of South Africa's water resources, lead to the development of a national microbial water quality monitoring programme (NMMP). This moni...

Thesis (Ph.D. (Botany))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.