African Palaeoenvironments and Geomorphic Landscape Evolution An International Yearbook of Landscape Evolution and Palaeoenvironments

About this book

This 30st jubilee volume (2010) of "Palaeoecology of Africa" looks back and reflects the 'state of the art' of what is actually known on former African climates and ecosystems in the format of review articles authored by specialists in the field. New research articles on climate and ecosystem dynamics as well as applied topics on geomorphic hazards and future environmental trends in Africa are included. This book will be of interest to all concerned with ecosystems dynamics, tropical forests, savannahs, deserts and related development problems of third world countries, especially ecologists, botanists, earth scientists (e.g. Quaternary and recent climate change), regional planners. It will also be valuable for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates as a reference for review and overview articles as well as a source of information for new original manuscripts and reviews on the state of the art of long term and Quaternary and Holocene landscape evolution esp. in subsaharan Africa. Palaeobotanists, Palynologists and Quaternarists will equally find this edition useful for their work.

Contents

Introduction; 1. How it all began; 2. Reconstructing Environmental Changes; 3. Climate Reconstruction Based on Fluvial Deposits; 4. A Sedimentary Record of Environmental Change; 5. Ecosystem Change During MIS 4 and early MIS 3; 6. The Potential of Phytoliths to Reflect Past Environmental Conditions; 7. Topographic and Hydrological Control of Gully Erosion Phenomena; 8. Gypsum in Desert Soils, Subsurface Crusts and Host Sediments; 9. New Findings on Palaeoenvironmental Conditions; 10. Palaeoclimate of Ondiri Swamp, Kenya; 11. A Cluster-Analysis-Based Climate Classification for NE Africa; 12. Climate and Palaeoenvironmental Evolution in North Tropical Africa; 13. An Assessment of the Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Natural Hazards in Central Africa.

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Biography

Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Africa (CIRA/ZIAF), Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany