Plot Registry · ZA-ARR-STRATA-NKH

Marula Block — 126 trees on the registry.

Custodian STS-C-00001 · Nkhensani Dhlamini · Hoxane TA · Phase 3.
Each pin is a row in the database.

Trees
126
Planted 21 March 2026
Species
11
8 indigenous · 3 citrus
Plot
1.5093 ha
Cropland, agroforestry
Density
83 / ha
VM0047 ARR-compliant
Authority
Hoxane
Traditional Authority, Phase 3
Native
112 / 126
88.9% indigenous

One custodian, one parcel, one ledger entry.

A Tree Custodian is the legal and economic counter-party for the trees on a single parcel. The custodian owns the land or holds it under customary right, plants the trees, keeps them alive, and earns from their measured carbon and from the marula they fruit. The obligation runs 40 years. Payment is performance-based — against surviving, measured trees, not promises.

This page is the template. The Marula Block is the first instance. Every custodian who follows — across Hoxane, Amashangana, Jongilanga, Mathibela, Mnisi, and Moletele — gets a page like this one, on the same dataset, with the same map and the same provenance chain. The site is the public face of the registry. Nothing on it that isn't in the registry.

1
Custodian on this page
Nkhensani Dhlamini · Phase 3 · Marula Block · 21 March 2026.
8,042 ha
Hoxane TA planting envelope
Cropland + residential under Phase 3. Nkhensani's 1.5 ha is one of many parcels in the same TA.
40,396 ha
Five-phase total
Across Jongilanga, Amashangana, Hoxane, Mnisi, Mathibela.
2.5 m
Trees projected
126 here · ~83/ha across the envelope. The arithmetic is what the project is engineered for.

Every tree counted. Every tree measured.

Phase 1 of Save the Sand runs on a census-based protocol: every tree on every parcel is registered as a discrete record, not inferred from sample plots. At planting (t=0) we capture species, planting guild, height, basal diameter, jittered GPS, and the custodian — each tree carrying its own ID in the form STS-YYYYMMDD-####. Saplings are too short for diameter-at-breast-height (DBH); DBH joins the record at first census, once a tree reaches 1.3 m.

Trees are planted in guilds — Large, Medium, Small — chosen so each parcel becomes a structurally diverse food-and-canopy system rather than a monoculture. Nkhensani's 126 trees split across the three guilds and 11 species. Guild is a field on every tree record and drives the allometric equation applied at carbon-stock calculation.

Data integrity is enforced by triangulation — three independent channels observe the same tree, and their agreement is the audit signal. The composite indicator is named SOP-MRV-920a "Triangulation Delta". Where the channels disagree, the divergence is measurable, trended, and auditable. The whole stack is built against VM0047 v1.1 + CCB v3.1.

1
Manual · Field
Trained field staff register every tree at planting and re-measure on a five-year cycle — species, height, basal diameter, GPS, and photo against each tree ID.
ODK-TM · SOP-MRV-100
2
Citizen · Custodian
The custodian checks in weekly through a progressive web app and a WhatsApp bot — survival, water, health, photo. Lowest cost, highest cadence.
PWA + WhatsApp · v0.1
3
Remote Sensing
Monthly Sentinel-2 composites built in Google Earth Engine supply NDVI, canopy cover, and disturbance flags wall-to-wall, then cross-check the field totals.
GEE · Sentinel-2
Δ 4
Triangulation Delta
The pairwise disagreement between the three channels is the standing audit signal — trended, logged, and exposed to the validator at every verification event.
SOP-MRV-920a
See the dMRV, row by row
The publishable fields, filtered live. The PII stays behind authentication.
Aerial view of Nkhensani Dhlamini's Marula Block — 126 trees planted in 33 GPS line-clusters across 1.5 hectares of cropland, Hoxane Traditional Authority, 21 March 2026

Two routes. One provenance chain.

Phase 1 supply for Nkhensani's pilot moved through two routes — each documented end-to-end so every tree on the map above can name the nursery that raised it and the donor that paid for it.

Marula route
60 marula
Sclerocarya birrea — the project's keystone species.
Propagated by Root and Ground at the Agricultural Research Council nursery in Nelspruit. Donated through the Londolozi Ripple Fund.
Indigenous + food route
66 others
Seven indigenous species, three citrus for household food security.
Raised at Tiyimeleni Nursery in Belfast, under Hoxane TA. Donated through SANParks.

Next, the landscape.