Main Content
P3 - Ecology, Paleoecology and Evolutionary Ecology
PI: Georg Miehe, Lars Opgenoorth | Sebsebe Demissew, Zerihun Woldu
Post-Doc: Graciela Gil-Romera
PhD-Student: Mekbib Gelaw
Overview
P3 (“Ecology, Paleoecology and Evolutionary Ecology”) has its focus on the disturbance ecology of Africa’s largest alpine ecosystem, the southern Ethiopian Bale Mountain highlands with its fire-fragmented Erica-thickets, all-year round livestock-grazing and the landscape-engineering of soil-dwelling rodents. High endemism counts for the ecological stability in evolutionary time scales, the continuous fire record of the last 15,000 years showed the fire-resilience of the Erica thickets and we can assume that the proven occupation of Middle Stone Age hunters since at least 45,000 years has left its fire-footprint in the pattern of alpine dwarf shrublands, Erica-thickets and mounds of soil-dwelling rodents. The goal, to determine the age of the alpine Anthropocene includes to disentangle the climate and the cultural signal in the charcoal- and pollen-record and to increase plausibility of the origin of fire. The next work packages are (1) extending the paleo-archive beyond the Late Glacial into the times of the first human intrusion, using lake sediments and hyrax middens with the help of charcoal- and pollen analyses and ancient DNA in the landscape level, (2) tracing the spatio-temporal pattern of ecological disturbance, using (3) the assessment of the afro-alpine Erica outposts including flowering status, seedlings, drought damages, and sampling for nutrient assessment, and the vegetation dynamics of the endemic flora of rodent’s mounds.
Achievements
1. Retrieval of 7 cores covering Late Glacial and Holocene sediments with a 15 m sediment core recording the last 16ka BP of environmental change in lake Garba Guracha (3950m asl).
2. Reconstruction of the local high-altitude moisture patterns using the fossil diatom assemblage.
3. Most comprehensive pollen analyses of upland Africa in order to reconstruct vegetation dynamics at decadal time scales.
4. Assessment of Africa’s longest high-altitude deep-time record of the fire-resilience of the Ericaceous Belt since 15 ka BP, and establishment of a numerical relationship between Erica and the burning patterns
5. First record of coprophilous fungi spores & archaeophyte settlement plants (introduced from the Near and Middle East) as Africa’s oldest records of high-altitude pastoralism
6. Assessment of the fire-resilience of Ericaceous Belt’s flowering plant species set
7. Assessment of resprouting of Erica after fire showing the ecological stability of a fire-managed pastoral ecosystem in the Ericaceous Belt
8. Establishment of 10 automatic climate stations between 1315 and 4385 m asl across the Bale Mountains
Figure 1 (left) & 2 (right): Burned and resprouting Erica vegetation; burning landscape at Sanetti Plateau, Ethiopia
Figure 3 (left) & 4 (right): Extracting sediment cores at Lake Garaba Guracha, Ethiopia
Publications
Gil-Romera, G.; Gelaw, M.F.; Renken, D.; Bittner, L.; Grady, D.; Lamb, H.; Lemma, B.; Zech, M. & Miehe, G. (18.06.2018). Long-term fire regimes define Afroalpine and Afromontane vegetation in tropical mountains: the case of the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia.. Presented at IPA-IAL Joint Meeting, Stockholm, Sweden.
Gil-Romera G (2018) Long-term environmental drivers of the afromontane and afroalpine vegetation in the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia . Presented at IPS, international.
Kurth, P. (2018): M.Sc.Thesis- Distribution patterns and the impact of the Giant Mole Rat (Tachyoryctes macrocephalus)on vegetation composition and plant biomass at the Sanetti Plateau in the Bale Mountains in South-East Ethiopia. Philipps Universität Marburg.
Lamb H, Bittner L, Davies S, Gelaw MF, Gil-Romera G, Grady D, Lemma B, Miehe G & Zech M (14.07.2018). Garba Guracha revisited: testing the Mountain Exile Hypothesis. Presented at AFQUA, Nairobi,Kenya.
Lamb H, Bittner L, Davies S, Gelaw MF, Gil-Romera G, Grady D, Lemma B, Miehe G & Zech M (2018) Garba Guracha revisited: testing the Mountain Exile Hypothesis. Presented at IPA-IAL Joint Meeting, Stockholm, Sweden.
Renken, D. (2018): M.Sc.Thesis-The regenerative capacity of vegetation in the fire-shaped Ericaceous belt of the Bale Mountains. Philipps Universität Marburg.
