William Gosling | Ecology of the past

Mapping Ancient Africa: INQUA Rome session (updated)

July 16, 2023
WDG

Mapping Ancient Africa participants at the INQUA Rome ice breaker event ready for action! Left to right: Bahru Zinaye Asegahegn, Alfred Houngnon, Busisiwe Hlophe.

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.

Part 1: 08:30-11:00

Giosan et al. When the desert was a lake: Providing context for Homo sapiens development in the northern Kalahari
Chase et al. Paleolakes and socioecological implications of glacial “greening” of the South African interior
Blinkhorn et al. Evaluating refugia in recent human evolution in Africa
Aureli et al. Homo sapiens behaviour and adaptation in East Africa. New evidence from an open-air site in a modern Ethiopian savannah environment: the GOT10 site
Effiom et al. Late Holocene palaeoecological studies at Lake St Lucia, KwaZulu-Natal
Tallavaara et al. Pan-African Climate and Vegetation over the Quaternary and Implications for Human Distribution
Quick et al. Palaeoenvironments of the Cape Floristic Region: New research & current developments

Part 2: 11:00-13:00

Mapping Ancient Africa: Rome workshop – the team

July 16, 2023
WDG

In person attendees (left to right): William Gosling (University of Amsterdam), Busisiwe Hlophe (University of Witwatersrand), Michela Leonardi (University of Cambridge), Soléne Boisard (University of Montréal), Rahab Kinyanjui (National Museums of Kenya), Trevor Hill (University of KwaZulu-Natal), Mathias Vinnepand (Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz), Tom Johnson (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Manu Chevalier (University of Bonn), Brian Chase (CNRS: Montpellier), Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr (Free University of Berlin), Markus Fischer (University of Potsdam), Bahru Zinaye Asegahegn (University of Cologne), Alfred Houngnon (AGIR), and Jemma Finch (University of KwaZulu-Natal); present but not in photo Angela Effion (University of Witswatersrand).

A further nine participants were anticipated to attend the workshop but, due to a combination of the non-issue of visas, logistical difficulties and ill health, they were not able to attend at the last moment. These were: Aliyu Adamu Isa (Ahmadu Bello University), George Biddulph (University of St Andrews), Olugbenga Boboye (University of Ibadan), Husna Mashaka (University of Nairobi), Emma Mbua (National Museums of Kenya), Aissatou Thiam Ndong (University of Cheikh Diop, Dakar), Adisa Ogunfolakan (Leventis Museum of Natural History), Alice Paine (University of Oxford), and Lynne Quick (Nelson Mandela University). Some people were able to attend partly online. Some have now made it to Rome and we hope to catch up at the INQUA Rome congress (Session 64) if not before. We hope that all will continue to be involved with the Mapping Ancient Africa project.

To find out more about the workshop click here.
To find out more about the project click here.
To see more workshop photos click here.

Mapping Ancient Africa: Rome workshop – gallery

July 15, 2023
WDG

The Mapping Ancient Africa workshop took place on the 12-13 July 2023 at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. At this INQUA funded workshop we played with palaeoclimate models and discussed past environmental change across the continent. Here are some picture of us in action. To find out more click here.

Day 1: Modelling past climate through the pastclim package, and reconstructing past climate through CREST

Day 2: Planning the proposed special issue and the future of the project

Mapping Ancient Africa: Rome workshop

July 14, 2023
WDG

The Mapping Ancient Africa workshop took place at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome on the 12 and 13 July 2023. Participants engaged with two different approaches to palaeoclimate modelling:

Interfacing palaeoclimate models through the “pastclim” R package. Lead by Michela Leonardi.
Reconstrucing palaeclimate on the basis of ancient pollen data using the CREST program. Lead by Manu Chevalier.

The aim of the workshop was to promote interaction between scientists working across Africa and across disciplines (palaeoclimate, palaeoecology, archaeology, modelling). The plenary session was joined by participants who could not make it to Italy via Zoom. This session was recorded and you can watch it below. In the plenary session outputs from the workshop, the planned special issue of Quaternary International, and the future of the Mapping Ancient Africa project were discussed.

To find out more about the workshop click here.

“Plant Ecology & Diversity” & Biogeography

July 6, 2023
WDG

A recent open letter to Wiley from Associate Editors working for the Journal of Biogeography posted by Lucie Zinger and others highlighted a dispute between the editors and the publishers in relation to: (i) the proposed switch of the journal to a pure open access model, (ii) financial barriers to publication, (iii) the proposed increase in throughput of manuscripts to maximise profits, and (iv) the manuscript referral process (see @LucieZinger, read tweet here, dated 28 June 2023). This got me thinking about these issues in relation to the journal that I am most involved with editing which also published papers related to biogeography; Plant Ecology & Diversity.

Plant Ecology & Diversity is the journal of the Botanical Society of Scotland. It is published in association with Taylor & Francis and any profits are split between the publishers and the academic society. To promote diversity and inclusion among authors the journal has a policy of double blind peer review (and has done for many years). Further, there are no publication fees for authors to publish in this journal, however, this does mean that published papers are behind a pay wall. An “Open Access” option is available to all authors for a fee (hybrid model), although the invited “Grubb Reviews” series is automatically published Open Access. Subject Editors and Associate Editors “work” for the journal gratis (for free) and the love of furthering the field.

If you have manuscripts related to biogeography, and prefer this mode of publishing, then please consider the fit of your paper to Plant Ecology & Diversity and send them our way. Or indeed if you have manuscripts related to one of our other key themes:

evolution and systematics,
global change and vegetation dynamics,
environment and plant functioning, and
biotic interactions.

The journal accepts original research articles (c. 7000 words), rapid communications (c. 2500 words), review articles (c. 12,000 words), and perspectives (c. 2500 words). Other options for publishing are of course also available 🙂

50 years of palaeoecology reviewed

July 4, 2023
WDG

Henry Hooghiemstra (University of Amsterdam) began working on “long” continental pollen records during his PhD (Hooghiemstra, 1984). After a long and distinguished career working around the Henry has just published a retrospective discussing the challenges, benefits, and prospects for investing in this aspect of palaeoecological research (Hooghiemstra, 2023).

References

Hooghiemstra, H. (2023) Making a Long Continental Pollen Record, a Fabulous and Bizarre Enterprise: A 50-year Retrospective. Palynology 47, 1-4. DOI: 10.1080/01916122.2023.2191257
Hooghiemstra, H. (1984) Vegetational and climatic history of the high plain of Bogota, Colombia: A continuous record of the last 3.5 million Years Gantner Verlag, Vaduz.

Mapping Ancient Africa: INQUA Rome session

July 3, 2023
WDG

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.

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.

Part 1: 08:30-10:30

Giosan et al. When the desert was a lake: Providing context for Homo sapiens development in the northern Kalahari
Chase et al. Paleolakes and socioecological implications of glacial “greening” of the South African interior
Biddulph et al. Spatiotemporal variability in the initiation and development of peatlands across the central Congo Basin
Blinkhorn et al. Evaluating refugia in recent human evolution in Africa
Aureli et al. Homo sapiens behaviour and adaptation in East Africa. New evidence from an open-air site in a modern Ethiopian savannah environment: the GOT10 site
Dembele Climatic fluctuations during the last millenium and their impact on political history and human settlements in West Africa
Porchier et al. Annually resolved hydroclimate variability in the East African Rift Valley at a time critical for hominin dispersion
Effiom et al. Late Holocene palaeoecological studies at Lake St Lucia, KwaZulu-Natal

Part 2: 11:00-13:00

Unissued Diplomas

June 30, 2023
WDG

I would like to draw readers attention to the “Unissued Diplomas” exhibition that documents stories of students killed in the ongoing war in Ukraine. This exhibition is currently on display in the entrance hall of the Science Faculty building of the University of Amsterdam. You can view the exhibition online at: https://www.unissueddiplomas.org/

Phytolith assemblages reflect variability in human land use and the modern environment

June 29, 2023
WDG

Open access:

Witteveen NH, White C, Sanchez Martinez BA, Booij R, Philip A, Gosling WD, Bush MB, McMichael CNH. 2023. Phytolith assemblages reflect variability in human land use and the modern environment. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. DOI: 10.1007/s00334-023-00932-2

Mapping Ancient Africa: Workshop in Rome

June 23, 2023
WDG

The Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) workshop in Rome will take place on the 12 and 13 July 2023. The workshop supported by International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) and hosted by the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. During the workshop we will be working towards aims of the MAA project to strengthen the research community of Quaternary scientists working across Africa, and to further our scientific goals of understanding past climate change. To achieve this we will work collaboratively to:

simulate past climate change in Africa,
develop the proposed Special Issue of Quaternary International, and
plan the next steps for the MAA project.

Twenty-seven people are registered for the workshop and we look forward to seeing them in Rome. If you are not registered for the workshop but still want to participate this is possible. On the 13 July between 15:00 and 18:00 CEST the workshop sessions will be online via Zoom. To obtain the Zoom link either visit the MAA Slack channel, or contact William Gosling. During the online part of the meeting we will present the outputs from the palaeoclimate mapping activity, the plans for the special issue, and outline the ideas future of MAA. Feedback from the wider MAA community will be very welcome.