Regarding similar geological
and geomorphologic conditions, semi-arid
environments, land use changes, especially forestry development,
and the socio-economic problems such as
population growth, deficits in domestic water supply,
etc., the Umzimvubu catchment shows a significant
system behaviour and depicts the basin as a representative
area for broader parts of the sub-tropical South
Africa (Forsyth et al., 1997). Therefore, the project
follows an regionalisation approach, which is based on
the transfer of knowledge resulting from hillslope process
studies up to meso- and macroscale modelling.
Many studies have demonstrated that remotely
sensed data provide both actual and spatial distributed
information for hydrological catchment modelling, especially
in areas which are difficult to monitor when
using conventional techniques (Mauser et al., 1998;
Schultz and Engman, 2000).