Description: Current access routes were captured by means of heads-up digitizing based on 2015 orthophotos for eThekwini and 2013 orthophotos for the remainder of the coast. Routes were captured at a scale of 1:1000 and classified according to the following characteristics, based on the National Coastal Access Guide (DEA, 2014):<br>
- private or public routes (depending on the location of the entry point of access); <br>
- formal or informal routes (depending on the construction and maintenance of the route); <br>
- route surface; <br>
- connection to public transport; and <br>
- the presence or absence of amenities (parking lots, tidal pools and recreational open areas).
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23% of all the digitized routes were groundtruthed, these routes are noted in the "Route Verified" field.
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The study area excluded iSimangaliso Wetland Park.
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For more information please visit the <a href="http://www.coastkzn.co.za/ACCESS-ROUTES?Theme=2" target="_blank">Coastal Access</a> page on CoastKZN.
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<strong>Source:</strong> ORI, 2016
Description: KZN has a large boat-based marine recreational and commercial industry that includes line-fishing, scuba diving and other activities. Collaboration between the various stakeholders in KZN has resulted in the development of a Boat Launch Site Monitoring System that generates unique and comprehensive launch statistics and information about associated activities.<br><br>
Registers from 2016 are attached for those launch sites that participated in this monitoring initiative. <br><br>
Northern and Southern launch boundaries are also indicated for licensed sites. These are awaiting final approval.
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For more information please visit the <a href="http://www.coastkzn.co.za/BLSMS?Theme=2" target="_blank">Boat Launch Site Monitoring System</a> page on CoastKZN.
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<strong>Source:</strong> ORI, 2017
Description: Parking facilities were digitized for the KZN coast (excluding iSimangaliso Wetland Park) based on 2015 orthophotos for eThekwini and 2013 orthophotos for the remainder of the coast. They were classified according to type of parking (formal or informal) and surface (hard or soft).<br><br>
<strong>Source:</strong> ORI, 2017
Description: KZN were divided into grids which stretched approximately 8km along the coast and 1km inland, resulting in 49 grids (excluding iSimangaliso Wetland Park).<br><br>
For each grid the following were calculated:<br>
- Physical vulnerability, calculated from the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI, Palmer et al., 2011): A CVI of 9-14 were considered at lower risk, 15-19 at moderate risk and 20-28 at higher risk.<br>
- Activities: percentage coverage of swimming beaches, fishing hotspots, subsistence fisheries and subsistence harvesting.<br>
- Protectead areas and marine protected areas coverage<br>
- Land cover coverage including altered land, built-up land, natural land and disturbed land.<br>
- Proposed route density (number of routes per km): based on the number of access routes proposed to provide reasonable access to coastal activities and resources without exceeding the environment’s capacity to sustain such access. The indicators used to define this density are the previous fields (CVI, activities, protected areas and land cover).<br>
- Current public formal route density (number of routes per km)<br>
- Current public informal route density (number of routes per km)<br>
- Current private route density (number of routes per km)<br>
- Priority: according to the aforementioned indicators and route densities, an index were created to establish the quality of current coastal access and recommend an appropriate management priority level to each grid.<br><br>
For more detail regarding this project, please go to the <a href="http://www.coastkzn.co.za/ACCESS-ROUTES?Theme=2" target="_blank">Access Routes page</a> on CoastKZN.<br><br>
<strong>Source:</strong> ORI, 2016