Objective
In stark contrast to the abundance of high quality palaeoenvironmental records obtained from the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, terrestrial palaeoenvironmental information from southern Africa's drylands comes from discontinuous deposits with poor absolute age control and ambiguous palaeoclimatic significance. Confronted with the possibility of future environmental and social disruption as a result of climate change, the need for reliable records from southern Africa has never been so acute. This project seeks to develop rock hyrax middens as novel palaeoenvironmental archives to investigate long-term climate change. Hyrax middens (fossilised accumulations of urine and faecal pellets) contain a range of palaeoenvironmental proxies, including fossil pollen and stable isotopes. As part of a pilot study, I have created new collection and sampling methodologies, establishing the proof of principle and showing that middens provide continuous sub-annual to multi-decadal multi-proxy records of environmental change spanning the last 50,000 years. This work has been exceptional in terms of its ability to elucidate long-term climate dynamics at the local scale, and I now intend to apply my techniques to studying environmental change across the whole of southern Africa, a climatically sensitive, but poorly understood region of the globe. Developing new sites, proxies and analytical techniques, HYRAX will provide the first opportunity to study rapid climate change events, the extent and phasing of major climatic phenomena, and the direction and potential impacts of future climate change.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
ERC-2010-StG_20091028
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Host institution
75794 PARIS
France
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.