Quaternary Environmental Change in Southern Africa: Physical and Human Dimensions

Description

Ongoing climate change necessitates advances in our understanding of the interrelationships between climate, landscape-shaping processes and human activity over long time periods, especially in areas that are already climatically stressed. This volume presents new ideas on macroscale landscape evolution; mountain, fluvial and aeolian processes; and environments in southern Africa, a key region in the story of human evolution during the last two million years. Interdisciplinary in scope, it brings together an international team of experts to synthesise the latest research and understanding of landscape-human relationships in this region. It incorporates results from the emerging fields of geoarchaeology and cultural landscapes and utilises the latest data and analytical techniques. A key reference for researchers studying hominid evolution, geoarchaeology and environmental change, it provides a benchmark study of southern African landscape evolution during the Quaternary. It will also appeal to professionals and policymakers with interests in future human-landscape evolution in southern Africa.

Jasper Knight is a professor of physical geography at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a geoscientist with research interests in geomorphology and sediment system responses to climate change during the late Pleistocene and Holocene, specifically on glaciers, rivers, coasts and mountains, in Europe, USA, Australasia and southern Africa. Stefan W. Grab is also a professor of physical geography at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a geomorphologist with a research focus on cold region and mountain geomorphology, Quaternary environmental change in southern Africa and quantifying climate change during recent and historical times.

'One of the major strengths of this book is the wide range of topics explored, presenting an up-to-date and very comprehensive overview of the historical basis for the literature on Southern African landscapes, environmental changes and human-climate-landscape interactions ... it is pleasing to see the inclusion of colour photographs ... the volume is very well produced and will receive a wide readership given the range of topics covered.' Colin V. Murray-Wallace, Quaternary Science Reviews