CATCHMENTS
Very few of the provincial boundaries follow the watershed or river boundaries within the country. With the exception of the Free State that is bordered by the Vaal and the Orange Rivers, and the Northern Cape that has its northern boundary as the Orange and Molopo/Nossob Rivers, the remainder of the provinces have only small sections of their boundaries defined by mountains or rivers as boundaries.
From an ecological and water management point of view, dividing the country into geographic boundaries based on catchment areas makes more sense than using cadastral boundaries such as farm fences. Geographic boundaries often divide one ecosystem from another or one rainfall district from another, as in the case of the mountains of the Western Cape. On the seaward side of the mountain the land receives significantly more rain than on the rain shadow side. By dividing the management area by catchment increases the efficacy of the management of ecological systems as wholes and not as parts of a province. The information is indicated by primary catchment names and the smaller catchments are shown by their water catchment area codes. Refer to primary catchment maps for information on river names.
THE FOLLOWING DATA SETS MAY BE VIEWED:
Primary catchments
Secondary catchments
Tertiary catchments
Quaternary catchments
Choose a province to view map or click on province in image
Eastern Cape
Free State
Gauteng
KwaZulu-Natal
Mpumalanga
Northern Cape
Northern Province
North West
Western Cape
SECONDARY CATCHMENTS:
Choose a province to view map or click on province in image
Eastern Cape
Free State
Gauteng
KwaZulu-Natal
Mpumalanga
Northern Cape
Northern Province
North West
Western Cape
Crude economic response to environmental dynamics Past experience has shown that economic systems tend to respond very slowly to environmental crises. By the time that the economic systems have found the means to respond to environmental loss, species extinction, over-exploitation and wastage have caused loss or irreversible damage to natural environmental assets and resources. Clear examples of this include the slow response of governments to tropical hardwood logging in the Amazon, despite the clear evidence of reduced forest areas for atmospheric "cleansing" and carbon dioxide/oxygen recycling.
Poor costing of the pollution of environmental resources Unless real economic costs are directly associated with the pollution of water, air and land, the environment will continue to subsidise the waste disposal costs of business and our quality of life will continue to be adversely affected. |
TERTIARY CATCHMENTS:
Choose a province to view map or click on province in image
Eastern Cape
Free State
Gauteng
KwaZulu-Natal
Mpumalanga
Northern Cape
Northern Province
North West
Western Cape
QUATERNARY CATCHMENTS:
Choose a province to view map or click on province in image
Eastern Cape
Free State
Gauteng
KwaZulu-Natal
Mpumalanga
Northern Cape
Northern Province
North West
Western Cape