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

南部非洲，甚至整个南半球，缺乏完善当前生物群和一般环流模型模拟所需的古植被以及绝对温度和降雨量数据。纳米比亚提供了一系列独特的机会来发展植被、温度和降雨量的长期记录。该国丰富的洞穴和洞穴是如何实现这一目标的关键，大型瀑布凝灰岩和厚厚的古代河流/风沙沉积序列起到了支撑作用。这项拟议的研究涉及来自纳米比亚、博茨瓦纳、南非和美国的科学家，将从洞穴洞穴、瀑布凝灰岩和古代河流/风成沉积序列研究纳米比亚过去13万年来的全新世环境变化。该项目将包括广泛的现场采样、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与环境的关系。新的数据还将被用来与厄尔尼诺频率的记录进行比较，以评估其在全新世期间的变化。南半球陆地数据的稀少覆盖限制了全球气候模拟所依赖的那种详细的数据模型比较。这项研究将提供过去13万年来南部非洲新的中高分辨率植被、温度和降雨量数据，从而填补南部非洲陆地古环境记录中的一个重大空白。这将是非洲次大陆最长的此类记录，也是世界上最长的记录。所开发的数据将对准确的全球气候模拟至关重要，与厄尔尼诺频率记录的比较将有助于我们更好地理解和模拟目前厄尔尼诺现象的发生和强度。

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.