Late Quaternary changes in climate and land cover in the Northern Horn of Africa and adjacent areas

Abstract

Most studies of landscape dynamics in the Ethiopian Highlands offer linear relations of population pressure and periodic droughts as causes of environmental degradation. Such views rely on limited historical information of one or two centuries, which is inadequate for understanding the longer term effects of climatic shifts on landscape dynamics and environmental change in the Highlands. In this study, we conducted a “meta-analysis” of long-term climate and biogeographic change and landscape dynamics during the Holocene using multi-proxy evidence from lacustrine (n = 10), marine (n = 5), geomorphic (n = 13) and vegetation (n = 7) records from the highlands and the wider Horn of Africa and we..