The evolution of Late Quaternary alluvial landscapes in northern Oman

快速的城市和工业发展正在以惊人的速度改变着阿拉伯的面貌。然而，这些景观是数十万年来环境变化的档案，为理解遥远过去人类人口的人口变异性提供了重要的框架。来自西部哈贾尔山脉沿线大量河流和湖泊沉积的多代理数据可以用来开发气候驱动的环境变化的敏感记录。史前人口的分散从根本上与阿拉伯半岛内淡水资源的可获得性有关。特别是，占领杰贝勒法亚(阿联酋)等考古遗址似乎与整个地区降雨增加和植被扩张同步。尽管该地区的古环境调查有可能促进对早期人类-环境相互作用的了解，但到目前为止，只有少数研究具有良好的计时控制。因此，从区域内的扇体系统建立先进和可靠的阿拉伯古水文学框架，有可能产生关于我们祖先可用的水资源以及影响其流动性的环境压力的高分辨率记录。这一记录对地区博物馆和遗产组织具有巨大的教育价值。研究问题：该项目的主要目的是利用位于哈贾尔山脉西部的一系列古老的河流/冲积沉积序列，开发一个气候驱动的阿拉伯南部景观变化框架。主要的研究问题将是：1.阿拉伯东南部哈贾尔西部地区排水激活的性质和时间是什么？2.阿拉伯东南部环境的非生物和生物成分对这些排水激活时期有何反应？3.这种变化如何与更广泛的区域和全球气候变异性相对应？4.水资源可获得性的这些变化对早期智人及其整个中晚更新世的人口统计学有什么影响？5.如何利用这些发现来改善该地区博物馆和遗址中史前民族的故事呈现？

Rapid urban and industrial development is altering the landscape of Arabia at an alarming rate. However, these landscapes are archives of hundreds of thousands of years of environmental change, and provide an important framework for understanding the demographic variability of human populations in the distant past. Multi-proxy data from an extensive suite of river and lake deposits along the western Hajar Mountains can be used to develop a sensitive record of climatically-driven environmental change. The dispersals of prehistoric populations are fundamentally linked to the availability of freshwater resources within the Arabian Peninsula. In particular, the occupation of archaeological sites such as Jebel Faya (UAE), are seemingly synchronous with increased rainfall and the expansion of vegetation throughout the region. Despite the potential of palaeoenvironmental investigations in this region to advance knowledge of early human-environment interactions, to date there are only a few studies with good chronometric control. Therefore, building an advanced and securely dated framework of Arabian palaeohydrology from fan systems within the region has the potential to generate a high-resolution record of the water resources available to our ancestors, and the environmental pressures influencing their mobility. This record has huge educational value for regional museums and heritage organisations.Research questions: The main aim of this project is to develop a framework of climatically driven landscape change from SE Arabia utilising a series of dated fluvial/alluvial sediment sequences situated along the western Hajar Mountains. The overarching research questions will be: 1. What is the nature and timing of drainage activation from the western Hajar region of SE Arabia? 2. How did the abiotic and biotic components of SE Arabian environments respond to these periods of drainage activation? 3. How do such changes correspond with wider regional and global climate variability? 4. What implications did these changes in water resource availability have for Early Homo sapiens and their demography throughout the Mid-Late Pleistocene? 5. How can these findings be used to improve presentation of the stories of pre-historic peoples in museums and heritage sites within the region?