Professor Mutanga’s expertise lies on Ecological Remote Sensing, with particular emphasis on vegetation pattern analysis and monitoring, agricultural landuse mapping as well as wildlife habitat evaluation. His focus in recent years has been on the development of remote sensing techniques for mapping tropical vegetation quality and quantity to understand wildlife feeding patterns and distribution.  His emerging niche areas include mapping vegetation species, disease infestation on plantation forests and agricultural crops as well as quantification of forest degradation and its impact on biodiversity and ecosystem condition.

Since joining UKZN in 2005, Prof Mutanga has graduated 5 PhDs and 14 Masters Students and is currently supervising more than 15 post graduate students. He has published more than 50 articles in DoE approved/ISI journals and has several conference proceedings and book chapters. He holds a C1 NRF rating and serves in several national and international research committees.