Environmental Change in Namibia During the Last 130,000 Years From Cave Speleothems, Tufas and Fluvial Sediments

南部非洲，实际上是南半球的一般，缺乏古植被和绝对温度和降雨量的数据，需要完善目前的生物群落和大气环流模式模拟。 纳米比亚提供了一系列独特的机会来发展长期的植被，温度和降雨记录。 该国丰富的洞穴和洞穴沉积物是实现这一目标的关键，大型瀑布凝灰岩和厚厚的古代河流/风成沉积物序列起着支持作用。 这项拟议中的研究涉及纳米比亚、博茨瓦纳、南非和美国的科学家，将研究纳米比亚在过去13万年中的全新世环境变化，包括洞穴洞穴沉积物、瀑布凝灰岩和古代河流/风成沉积物的序列。 该项目将包括广泛的实地取样、样品测年、主要同位素和其他化学和元素测量，以及将地下水波动与气候条件联系起来的回归分析。 这项研究将把新收集的气候记录与纳米比亚和南部非洲其他地区的考古数据进行比较，以评估全新世期间人类与环境的关系。 新数据还将用于与厄尔尼诺频率记录进行比较，以评估其在全新世期间的变化。南半球陆地数据覆盖范围的稀疏限制了全球气候建模所依赖的详细数据-模型比较。 这项研究将提供南部非洲过去13万年来新的中分辨率和高分辨率植被、温度和降雨数据，从而填补南部非洲陆地古环境记录的一个重大空白。 这将是次大陆最长的记录，也是世界上最长的记录。 所开发的数据对准确的全球气候建模至关重要，与厄尔尼诺频率记录的比较将有助于提高我们对厄尔尼诺现象的理解和建模。

Southern Africa, and indeed the Southern Hemisphere in general, lacks the paleovegetation and absolute temperature and rainfall data needed for refinement of current biome and General Circulation Model simulations. Namibia presents a unique set of opportunities to develop long records of vegetation, temperature, and rainfall. The abundant caves and speleothems of the country are the key to how this can be achieved, with large waterfall tufas and thick ancient fluvial/aeolian sediment sequences playing supportive roles. The proposed research, which involves scientists from Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, and the U.S.A., will study Holocene environmental change in Namibia during the last 130,000 years from cave speleothems, waterfall tufas, and sequences of ancient fluvial/aeolian sediments. The project will include extensive field sampling, sample dating, staple isotope and other chemical and element measurements, and regression analysis to link ground water fluctuations with climate conditions. The research will compare the newly collected climatic records with archaeological data for Namibia, and for other parts of southern Africa, to evaluate human-environmental relationships during the Holocene. The new data will also be used to compare with records of El Nino frequency to assess its variations during the Holocene.The sparse coverage of terrestrial data in the Southern Hemisphere restricts the kind of detailed data-model comparisons on which the global climate modeling relies. The research will provide new medium- and high-resolution vegetation, temperature, and rainfall data for southern Africa for the last 130,000 years, thus filling a major gap in the terrestrial paleoenvironment record for southern Africa. This would be the longest such record for the subcontinent and the longest records in the world. The data developed will be crucial to accurate global climate modeling, and the comparison with the records of El Nino frequency will help improve our understanding and modeling of El Nino recurrence and intensity in the present.