CONGRESS 55
Meet the new GSSA Vice
President: Dr Igshaan Samuels
Dr Igshaan Samuels is a senior
researcher with the Agricultural
Research Council –
Range and Forage Sciences and
is based in Cape Town. He is a
trained rangeland ecologist and
conducts his research mainly in
pastoral systems in the Succulent
and Nama Karoo biomes.
He has a keen interest in the
impacts of land use on the biodiversity
(flora and fauna) and
ecosystem function in variable
rangelands. His work also focuses
on the different livestock management
systems in communal
and private lands and the underlying
knowledge systems used by
farmers to make important farming
decisions.
Dr Samuels collaborates with
several local, national and international
intuitions and co-supervises
masters and PhD students
from the University of the Western
Cape and Stellenbosch University.
Dr Samuels served on the GSSA
council previously from 2009-
2015 including the position of
President.
He also serves as an associate
editor for the journals Pastoralism
and African Range and Forage
Sciences.
Given the integrated nature of
communal rangelands, he recently
also started to incorporate
climate change vulnerability and
adaptation into his research to
have a more holistic understanding
of rangeland dynamics in the
arid zone.
11 Grassroots Vol 20 No 3 September 2020