droughts | Ecology of the past

Post holiday, and pre-teaching, I was searching around for recent studies on the environmental history of Africa and came across the following which hopefully are also of interest to Mapping Ancient Africa enthusiasts. If you have a paper that would be nice to highlight here, please get in contact and I will be happy to include it.

Bengo, M. D., Gomat, H.-Y., Bita, A. M., Ifo, S. A., Maley, J., & Giresse, P. (2026). High-resolution study of the Late Holocene from pollen of a marine core in the Gulf of Guinea (Cameroon): Paleoenvironmental and ecological dynamics in Central Africa during the last 2,500 years. Open Journal of Forestry, 16(01), 83–105. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojf.2026.161006
Effiom, A. C., Neumann, F. H., Scott, L., & Bamford, M. K. (2025). Morphology and ecological significance of Holocene palynomorphs from the Indian Ocean Coastal Belt Biome of South Africa. Palynology, 49(3), 2428382. https://doi.org/10.1080/01916122.2024.2428382
Garbe, P., Behl, M., Es-Senussi, A., Lange-Athinodorou, E., & Meister, J. (2026). Holocene vegetation dynamics and agricultural development at ancient Bubastis (Egypt): Insights from phytolith analysis. Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, 5, 1778152. https://doi.org/10.3389/fearc.2026.1778152
García-Morato, S., Sánchez-Goñi, M. F., Urrego, D. H., & d’Errico, F. (2026). Climatic variability, vegetation dynamics, and cultural innovation in Southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age. Communications Earth & Environment, 7(1), 75. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03051-0
Gunnell, Y., Mietton, M., Defive, E., Andriamitia, J., Montade, V., Jouannic, G., Voldoire, O., Ramanantsoa, A., Blondeau, S., Nicoud, G., & Rasoanimanana, R. R. (2026). Peat deposits as records of Quaternary tectonics and landscape dynamics in the semi-volcanic highlands of Madagascar. CATENA, 273, 110414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2026.110414
Sylvestre, F., Melles, M., Wennrich, V., Dinies, M., Chalié, F., Swingedouw, D., Dallmeyer, A., Shi, X., Claussen, M., Jaeschke, A., Cocquyt, C., Karls, J., Kuper, J., Mallaye, B., Mazur, J.-C., Paillès, C., Rirongarti, R., Rethemeyer, J., Ritter-Prinz, B., … Kröpelin, S. (2026). Decadal-scale droughts disrupted the African Humid Period in the Sahara. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10336-7

Also, new volume of Palaeoecology of Africa coming soon, check out the contents list:

Runge, J. (ed.) Environmental History and Climate Dynamics in Tropical Africa: Landscapes, Humans and Change ISBN 9781041215400

I recently joined the editorial board of Plant Ecology & Diversity at the invitation of editor-in-chief Laszlo Nagy (University of Campinas, Brazil). The journal focuses on ecological and evolutionary issues within plant biology with broad themes covering biodiversity, conservation and global change. Furthermore, I think this is a particularly interesting journal to be involved with because of its option for double-blind peer reviews, commitment to providing a platform for ‘negative results’ and ‘repeat experiments’, and its open access Grubb Review series (Nagy & Resco de Dios, 2016); which already includes many significant articles, including: Ashton (2017), Barbeta & Peñuelas (2016), Grubb (2016), Körner (2018), Valladares et al. (2016), and Wilkinson & Sherratt (2016). In addition to the invited Grubb Reviews the journal publishes: research articles, short communications, reviews, and scientific correspondence. My role on the editorial board will be to cover submissions related to tropical palaeoecology and biogeography. So please consider submitting to Plant Ecology & Diversity if you have some exciting new research or ideas that you think would be appropriate.

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