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Water, Environment and Society in Times of Climatic Change pp 295–317Cite as

Pollen Records of Past Climate Changes in West Africa since the Last Glacial Maximum

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Part of the book series: Water Science and Technology Library ((WSTL,volume 31))

Abstract

Environmental reconstruction since the Last Glacial Maximum in Northwestern Tropical Africa has been severely limited by the incompleteness of the record, owing primarily to major discontinuities in lacustrine sediments preserved in a predominantly arid climate. Only two long and complete pollen sequences, each from deep crater lakes, have been obtained to register the whole deglacial and Holocene history of the humid equatorial forest (Maley, 1989). Other continental sites, all closely subject to local hydrogeological conditions (Lézine and Casanova, 1989) provide detailed ‘windows’ on short periods of the Holocene. However, comparison with marine sedimentary sequences that provide continuous, well dated records over longer time spans allows one to reconstruct changes in past atmospheric patterns over West Africa and in vegetation distribution on sub-continental as well as local scales. I present here a review of pollen data from West Africa and the nearby Eastern Atlantic undertaken to understand the vegetation response to past climatic and hydrological changes on different time scales. Interpretations of pollen diagrams are based on numerous studies on both modern pollen deposition from the Equatorial evergreen and semi-deciduous forests to the south (Brenac, 1988; Elenga, 1992; Reynaud-Farrera, 1995) to the Sudanian, Sahelian and Saharan driest ecosystems to the north (Lézine and Edorh, 1991; Lézine and Hooghiemstra, 1990; Maley, 1972, 1981; Ritchie, 1987) (Fig. 14.1). Land-sea correlations are also made.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. URA1761—CNRS “Paléontologie et Stratigraphie”, UPMC-Jussieu Boîte 106, F-75252, Paris cedex 5, France

    Anne-Marie Lézine

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  1. Anne-Marie Lézine
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  1. The Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel

    Arie S. Issar

  2. The Oxford Center for the Environment, Ethics and Society, Mansfield College, The University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Neville Brown

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Lézine, AM. (1998). Pollen Records of Past Climate Changes in West Africa since the Last Glacial Maximum. In: Issar, A.S., Brown, N. (eds) Water, Environment and Society in Times of Climatic Change. Water Science and Technology Library, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3659-6_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3659-6_14

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