Ecosystem Monitoring & Management Application (EMMA)

Measuring change in a changing world

EMMA is a decision-support site for protected areas in South Africa’s Cape Floristic Region—a Global Biodiversity Hotspot and UNESCO World Heritage Site (~20% of Africa’s plant diversity) where fire, climate, and land use shape fynbos. It provides up-to-date regional summaries and park-level reports on vegetation condition, anomalies, fire history, and veld age, in partnership with SAEON.

Open a park on the map below, or compare anomalies and veld age across parks.

Parks and regional veld age

Regional veld age (years since last known fire; color scale capped at 20 for display). Click a park outline for the full report—greenness, fire history, invasives, and climate.

Vegetation anomalies by park

Median monthly ΔEVI by park—higher = greener than typical for this month. Parks ordered low to high; open a park on the map for detail. Definitions: Data.

Veld age by park

As-of dates

See the Data page for STAC links, GitHub release tags, coverage definitions, and COG how-to. Product as-of dates:

Description Date last updated
Website 2026-Oct-20
EVI (VIIRS→Terra→Aqua fill) 2026-Sep-21
Weather 2025-Aug-24

Coverage — domain 225,181 km² · parks-union 16,609 km² · valid latest fused EVI 225,000 km² (EVI as of 2026-09-21) · fire-age known 41,136 km² / censored 184,045 km². Fire-age known/censored exclude cells where all fireage bands (age, last burn, is_censored) are NA; censored = never-burned / right-censored (is_censored = 1). Definitions & downloads.

Data freshness — STAC VI datetime: 2026-09-21 · envdata release updated: 2026-10-17 · page built: 2026-10-20 21:28 UTC · STAC catalog · Data page