Timm Hoffman

I was born and schooled in the Eastern Cape, mostly in Port Elizabeth, although my undergraduate and honours degrees in Botany and Zoology were completed at the University of Cape Town (1981-1984). I returned to the Friendly City to start my MSc in 1985 at the then University of Port Elizabeth (now the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) under the supervision of Richard Cowling. I upgraded my Masters and completed my PhD on the impact of grazing on the vegetation of the Sundays River Valley in 1989. This was followed by a year at the Jornada Long-Term Ecological Research site at Las Cruces, New Mexico in the USA where I worked with Walt Whitford and post-doc colleague Craig James from Australia. I returned to employment at the National Botanical Institute at Kirstenbosch in 1991 where I worked for ten years and led a national review of land degradation for South Africa. I joined the staff of UCT as the Leslie Hill Chair of Plant Conservation in 2001.

Teaching

I teach modules in undergraduate courses based on my research experiences in southern Africa. These include courses on the biomes of South Africa, land degradation and desertification, environmental change, inventory and monitoring, and the deserts of southern Africa. I also supervise Honours, MSc and PhD student projects which cover my range of research interests.

Publications

Scientific articles (since 2014)

• Forbes CJ, Gillson L and Hoffman MT 2018. Shifting baselines in a changing world: identifying management targets in endangered heathlands of the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. Anthropocene 22: 81-93
• MacPherson AJ, Gillson L and Hoffman MT 2018. Climatic buffering and anthropogenic degradation of a Mediterranean-type shrubland refugium at its semi-arid boundary, South Africa. The Holocene 28(4): 651–666.
  
• McAuliffe J, McFadden LD and Hoffman MT 2018. Role of aeolian dust in shaping landscapes and soils of arid and semi-arid South Africa. Geosciences 8: 171.
• Cardoso AW, Midgley JJ, Hoffman MT and Geldenhuys CJ 2017. Temperate forest dynamics and carbon storage: a 26-year case study from Orange Kloof Forest, Cape Peninsula, South Africa. Southern Forests: A Journal of Forest Science 79:1-7.
• Cronin K, Kaplan H, Gaertner M, Irlich U and Hoffman MT 2017. Aliens in the nursery: Assessing the attitudes of nursery managers to invasive species regulations. Biological Invasions 19(3): 925–937.
• Davis C, Hoffman MT and Roberts W 2017. Long-term trends in vegetation phenology over Namaqualand using GIMMS AVHRR NDVI3g dataset from 1982-2011. South African Journal of Botany 111: 76-85.
• Van Wilgen BW, Caruthers J, Cowling RM, Esler KJ, Forsyth AT, Gaertner M, Hoffman MT, Kruger FJ, Midgley GF, Palmer G, Pence G, Raimondo DC, Richardson DM, van Wilgen J and Wilson JRU 2016. Ecological research and conservation management in the Cape Floristic Region between 1945 and 2015: History, current understanding and future challenges. South African Journal of Science 71:3, 207-303.
• White JDM, Jack SL, Hoffman MT, Puttick J, Bonora D, Visser V and February EC 2016. Collapse of an iconic conifer: long-term changes in the demography of Widdringtonia cedarbergensis using repeat photography. BMC Ecology 16: 53.
• Okubamichael DY, Jack S, De Wet Bösenberg J, Hoffman MT and Donaldson JS 2016. Repeat photography confirms alarming decline in South African cycads. Biodivers Conserv 25: 2153.

Research

I am interested in how land use practices, particularly over the last 100 years, have impacted on the biodiversity and landscapes of the succulent karoo, nama-karoo and fynbos biomes in South Africa. I use a number of approaches (e.g. repeat fixed-point photography, ecological surveys, experimentation) to develop an accurate account of landscape and biodiversity change. This information informs conservation and management policy and also has relevance for the current focus on the long-term effects of climate change on the biota of the winter rainfall region. I have also established a long-term, interdisciplinary research programme in Paulshoek, a communal area in Namaqualand. The impact of natural resource use on Namaqualand's landscapes is understood in terms of the changing social and economic environments of the region.