The Wetlands in Drylands Research Network was established at an inaugural meeting held near Parys, Free State, South in November 2014. The meeting was organised through the Royal Society’s South Africa-UK Scientific Seminars Scheme, and funded in the UK by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and in South Africa by the National Research Foundation (NRF).
The names of those attending the meeting as part of the Seminars Scheme were as follows:
UK participants
Mark Smith, School of Geography, University of Leeds
Lindsay Stringer, School of Earth & Environment, University of Leeds
Andrew Thomas, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University
Stephen Tooth, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University
South African participants
Fred Ellery, Department of Geography, Rhodes University
Mary Evans, School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand
Jemma Finch, School of Agriculture, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Phumelele Gama, Department of Botany, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Michael Grenfell, Earth Sciences Department, University of the Western Cape
Marc Humphries, School of Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand
Donovan Kotze, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Heather Malan, University of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Munyaradzi Manjoro, Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, North West University
Eddie Riddell, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Denise Schael, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Erwin Sieben, Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Qwaqwa Campus
Others have become involved in the Research Network’s activities, most notably:
Tim Ralph, Department of Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University, Australia
Jiaguang Li, Faculty of Earth Resources, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China