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Rock Hyrax Middens and Climate Change in Southern Africa during the last 50,000 years

Obiettivo

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.

Campo scientifico (EuroSciVoc)

Argomento(i)

Invito a presentare proposte

ERC-2010-StG_20091028
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Meccanismo di finanziamento

ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant

Istituzione ospitante

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
Contributo UE
€ 1 356 762,00
Indirizzo
RUE MICHEL ANGE 3
75794 Paris
Francia
Regione
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Tipo di attività
Research Organisations
Collegamenti
Costo totale
Nessun dato

Beneficiari (2)