https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1536-7521
I was deeply saddened, and shocked, to receive the news of Prof. Bob Scholes’ untimely death while on a hiking trip with friends in Namibia. I have known Bob as a colleague and as a friend for over 35 years, and often worked closely with him while we were both employed at the CSIR for over 20 years. He was an extraordinary scientist, someone with a profound intellect, a remarkably wide knowledge of ecology and the natural world, and an ability and willingness to communicate this understanding clearly to his colleagues and to his students. At the time of his death, Bob was a Distinguished Professor of Systems Ecology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), where he served as the Director of the Global Change Institute. In his own words, he described his work as being in the field of “big picture” Systems Ecology, striving to address major national and international problems, notably global climate change, global biodiversity loss and land degradation. With his passing, South Africa and the world has lost one of the most outstanding ecologists of our time.
Bob's early career development was influenced in the 1970s by Prof. Brian Walker, his academic supervisor and mentor at Wits. Brian Walker introduced him to the relatively new field of systems ecology, where Bob soon began to make substantial contributions. After completing his PhD, he became the manager of the South African Savanna Biome Programme. The achievements of the programme are detailed in his book “An African savanna: synthesis of the Nyslvley study”, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1993, with Brian Walker as co-author.
South Africa abandoned its apartheid policies in 1991, and underwent a remarkable transition to a democratic government in 1994. South African scientists no longer faced the academic boycotts that characterised the apartheid era, and the demand for access to South African scientists rose as the world began to face the global problems of climate change and biodiversity loss. In 1991, Bob became involved in the Southern African Fire Atmosphere Research Initiative (SAFARI), a multi-national co-operative research programme under the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) that sought to quantify the role of African savanna fires in the global carbon balance. Bob made substantial contributions to SAFARI. He combined his considerable analytical skills with a sound understanding of systems ecology, an intimate knowledge of African savannas, and a willingness to engage southern African scientists.
Bob went on to compile South Africa's first Greenhouse Gas Inventory in 1995, the first of many reports of international significance. A brief perusal of his CV reveals that in the four years between 1999 and 2003, Bob participated in 60 international committee meetings, workshops or conferences in 22 countries in Africa, Australia, Asia, North and South America, Europe and the Caribbean. During this time, he cemented his position as a world leader in the field of global change. He co-authored the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's third, fourth and fifth assessments, was co-chair of the Conditions Working Group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and at the time of his death was co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ assessment of Land Degradation. He was also a member of the steering committees of several global earth observation bodies including the Global Climate Observing System, the Global Terrestrial Observing System (chair), the Group on Earth Observation's (GEO) Implementation Planning Task Team, and the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (chair).
Bob helped to develop (and implement, locally and internationally) the now well-established assessment process that translates scientific knowledge into policy. This process collates, evaluates and summarises what is known nationally and internationally about a particular issue, and identifies what is unknown. After an assessment is completed, governments should ensure that substantive research is conducted for the unknown and that proper regulation is put in place to reduce the known risks.
Despite his international standing and the demands on his time, Bob's interests remained firmly rooted in his homeland South Africa. Here, for example, he shaped environmental research at the CSIR for two decades, and he led several high-profile assessments that addressed controversial local issues, including the Assessment of Elephant Management (2008), and the Strategic Assessment of Shale Gas Development in the Karoo (2016). His popular book The Kruger National Park: wonders of a South African Eden (published by Struik in 1995) and his book Climate change: Briefings from Southern Africa (published by Wits University Press in 2015) respectively reflect his passion for the conservation of African savannas, and his desire to communicate critical scientific findings to a broader audience.
Throughout his career, Bob made prodigious and influential contributions to the scientific literature in the fields of savanna ecology, global change, and earth observation. The Google Scholar site lists 539 articles that he has authored or co-authored, which collectively have attracted 69,160 citations with an h-index of 101. He is among the top 1% of environmental scientists worldwide based on citation frequency. Bob's contributions have gained him substantial recognition, and in 1999 he was inaugurated as a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa at the relatively young age of 42. He was also a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the CSIR, Member of the South African Academy of Science, an NRF A-rated scientist, and a winner of the National Science and Technology Forum's Lifetime Award for contributions to science.
In January 2015, he took up his Distinguished Professorship at Wits, where he continued his work with a focus on developing capacity in the field. He recognised that it takes many years to develop a systems ecologist, and he strived to advance this pipeline at Wits through the growth of a research group of Masters and Doctoral students and Postdoctoral fellows.
On a personal note, Bob married Dr Mary Catherine Collins, a plant physiologist, in 1985. Now Prof. Mary Scholes, she has been at Bob's side for almost all of his professional career. As well as being an active scientific collaborator, she provided an important anchor in his incredibly busy life, a home to raise their son, and was an enthusiastic participant in their shared passion for producing gourmet meals.
People like Bob cannot be replaced, and his passing will leave a huge void in the scientific community for a long time. While we are now all much poorer, he has left an indelible mark on those of us fortunate enough to have known and interacted with him. Our deepest sympathies go out to his wife Mary and son Stirling, as well as to his many friends, and his colleagues and students, past and present.