The Okavango basin with its variety of savannah woodlands and wetland ecosystems linked by the central lifeline of the Okavango River is a global hot-spot of accelerating change and land use conflicts. The river has its source in the rainy highlands of Angola and terminates in the Okavango Delta, the world's largest inland delta and the largest freshwater swamp south of the equator. The TFO project will analyze ecosystem functions and services within this trans-boundary basin of high international visibility and high potential transferability of results to other tropical and sub-tropical regions.