August 30, 2023
The Society for Tropical Ecology‘s 7th European Conference of Tropical Ecology will be hosted by the University of Lisbon in 2024. Entitled “Tropical ecosystems in a fast-changing planet” the conference will take place from Monday 12 to Friday 16 February 2024. The call for sessions is now open (deadline 7 September 2023). So add the date of the congress to your diary and submit your exciting ideas for a session now…
For more details visit the conference web pages here.
August 29, 2023
The Palaeoecology Research Group within the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany is pleased to announce a new vacancy for a Doctoral student exploring long-term human-environment interactions in the Caribbean. The position will be for a period of 3 years with the option for extensions based in Jena, Germany and supervised by Dr. Yoshi Maezumi. The position will be linked with the Department of Ecosystem & Landscape Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam.
Deadline: 30 August 2023
For full details on how to apply click here.
August 29, 2023
Open access:
Nascimento, M.d.N., McMichael, C.N.H., Kleijwegt, Z., Åkesson, C., Gredal, C., Maezumi, S.Y., Bush, M.B. & Gosling, W.D. (2023) Fire in the clouds: How changing land use shaped an Andean biodiversity hotspot. Quaternary Science Reviews 317, 108278. DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108278
August 28, 2023
The next four interviews with scientists who participated in the Mapping Ancient Africa workshop in Rome (2023) are now online (see below). You can find more interviews with scientists by clicking the names below:
Interview 6: Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr (Free University of Berlin)
Interview 7: Mathais Vinnepand (Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz)
Interview 8: Rahab Kinyanjui (National Museums of Kenya & Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology)
Interview 9: Manu Chevalier (University of Bonn)
To check out all the Mapping Ancient Africa video content visit out the Ecology of the Past YouTube channel.
To find out more about the MAA Rome workshop follow links from here.
August 25, 2023
During the Mapping Ancient Africa workshop in Rome I conducted short interviews with the scientists involved. The first of these, Alfred Houngnon can be viewed here, below are four more, and more will follow as I get them uploaded. I hope they provide interesting insights into the diverse range of skills and backgrounds our scientists have.
To find out more about the Mapping Ancient Africa project click here.
August 24, 2023
The second part of the Mapping Ancient Africa session at the INQUA Rome congress contained eight talks. Busisiwe Hlophe (University of the Witwatersrand) kicked us off by showing us the power of looking at wood anatomy preserved in charcoal microfossils to determine the nature of past vegetation and climate. Rahab Kinyanjui (National Museums of Kenya) presented phytolith work from archaeological sites revealing a mixed woody and grassy vegetation associated with archaic Homo sapiens in Kenya.
Three talks from the Cape Region in South Africa then followed with Saul Manzano (University of Leon), Stella Moscher (University of Utah), and Asithandile Ntsondwa (Nelson Mandela University) using various palaeo ecological approaches to explore climate, vegetation and fire regime shifts during the Holocene. Adele Julier (University of Portsmouth) then took us a little further north to Namibia to think about the challenges of parameterising modern pollen-vegetation relationships in arid regions. The final southern African talk was given by Gemma Poretti (University of Cape Town) explored a new approache to tracking change in past rainfall patterns using charcoal material.
Continue Reading
August 18, 2023
On Wednesday 19 July 2023 the Mapping Ancient Africa session of the INQUA Rome congress took place. We were delighted to have an full program of speakers despite some late cancellations. The first session featured seven speakers.
The first two talks focused on southern Africa. The first talk by Liviu Giosan (Woodshole Oceanographic Institute) focused on new sediment cores extracted from the Okavango – Makgadikgadi region and new efforts to obtain sediment cores that can provide information on the dispersal of hominins. Brian Chase (CNRS) then looks us to the Karoo highlighting recent findings that suggest that this currently arid region was more habitable in the past and that a proliferation of stone tools suggests past peoples utilised the region extensively (Carr et al., 2023).
Continue Reading
August 17, 2023
Open access:
McMichael, C.N.H., Bush, M.B., Jiménez, J.C. & Gosling, W.D. (2023) Past human-induced ecological legacies as a driver of modern Amazonian resilience. People and Nature. DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10510
August 16, 2023
Gosling, W.D. & McMichael, C.N.H. (2023) The use of micro infrared spectroscopy in reconstructing past ecological and environmental change. Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences (ed. by R. Bradshaw) Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-323-99931-1.00087-8
July 16, 2023
The Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) project has a double session of talks and a poster session at the INQUA congress in Rome 2023. Our session will be on Wednesday 19 July. Unfortunately a number of the originally planned speakers could not make it to Rome due to a combination of not obtaining visas, logistical challenges and ill health. We wish them all well and hope that they will continue to be involved in the project. Further, many thanks to all those who have agreed to step up and give a presentation at a late notice. Below is an updated schedule correct as of Sunday 16 July based on the information contained on the INQUA Rome App; if you are aware of any further problems or changes please let me know ASAP!
If you are at the INQUA Rome congress please come along to our talks and posters in Session 64: Mapping Ancient Africa: Climate, Vegetation & Humans.
Ecology of the past 