Late Quaternary climate and landscape changes in Southern Africa based on integrative analyses of geoarchives

Although it is clear that large, rapid temperature changes have occurred during the last glacial-interglacial cycle and the Holocene in Southern Africa, we have only limited, and often imprecise, knowledge of how the major moisture-bearing atmospheric circulation systems have reacted to these changes. Using slope deposits, soils and sediments as palaeoclimatic geoarchives we will overcome these constraints. The role of many geoarchives in the reconstruction of the Quaternary climate in Southern Africa remains controversial, since the palaeoclimate data are based on evidence from marine cores, lake sediments, speleothems and spring sinter, fluvial sediments, aeolian sands and dust, colluvium, and coastal sediments. To elucidate climate controls on Quaternary landscape evolution and to use these data for palaeoclimatic reconstructions, slope deposits, soils and sediments have been investigated. The project will employ state-of-the-art geoscience methodology to interpret the record of precipitation changes of the Late Quaternary, including the shifting of the summer and winter rain belts, the chronology of catastrophic floods, the wind intensity and direction, and the role climatic factors may have played for prehistoric cultures. High resolution Late Quaternary records are provided by analysing the interstratification of slope deposits and soils with fluvial, lacustrine and aeolian sediment sequences. Earlier research has shown that aeolian and fluvial processes were active at the same time in the southwestern Kalahari during the LGM, documented by sequences of alternate bedding of aeolian, colluvial and fluvial sediments. The interfingering of slope deposits with fluvial flood sediments (slackwater deposits) in Namib Desert valleys document extreme precipitation events in the upper highland catchments and rains at the same time in the desert itself.