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