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P4 - Paleoecology: Pollen analysis and ecological history of the Bale Mountains
PI: Henry Lamb | Asfawossen Asrat Kassaye
Post-Doc: Graciela Gil-Romera
PhD-Student: David Grady
Overview
Pollen, plant macrofossil and charcoal analysis is central to reconstructing both the Human History as well as the Landscape History. In order to be able to use pollen analysis as a tool to disentangle these signals, close cooperation with the vegetation monitoring (P3: Environmental Baseline Assessment) and the identification of ecological indicators is mandatory. The initial approach will be to produce high resolution pollen analysis for the past 1000 years; at least eight good archives (lakes, ponds and peatlands in glacial tongue basins) will be made available through the cores. On the basis of these high resolution profiles, archives spanning the older past (to at least 16,000 years) will be analysed using pollen, spores, macrofossils, and charcoal.
Achievements
1. Obtaining a 15 m sediment core recording the last 16ka BP of environmental change in lake Garba Guracha (3950m asl).
2. Increased the number of pollen samples from 65 to 300. This has enabled us to reconstruct vegetation dynamics in this altitude at decadal time scales.
3. We have obtained the longest most continuous, best dated biomass burning record of the African continent.
4. Establishment of a numerical relationship between Erica and the burning patterns.
5. We have evidenced the earliest high altitude record of pastoral activities in Africa.
6. Reconstructed the local moisture patterns using the fossil diatom assemblage.
Figure 1 & 2: Extracting sediment cores from Sanetti Plaetau and Lake Garaba Guracha, Ethiopia
Publications
Gil-Romera G, Gelaw MF, Renken D, Bittner L, Grady D, Lamb H, Lemma B, Zech M & Miehe G (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.
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.
Gil-Romera G (2018) Long-term environmental drivers of the afromontane and afroalpine vegetation in the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia . Presented at IPS, international.
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 AFQUA, Nairobi, Kenya.
