Late Quaternary research in southern Africa: progress, challenges and future trajectories

Abstract

Southern African late Quaternary research has developed rapidly during recent decades, with an increase in the range of proxies used, the inclusion of new field sites, and increased international collaboration and skills transfer. This has enabled recent meta-studies into the synoptic drivers of palaeoenvironmental shifts across the region, and of spatial variability in climatic and environmental changes. Expanded research has also highlighted uncertainties in the understanding of southern African palaeoenvironments, and the relationships with Northern Hemisphere analogues, encouraging on-going critical debate within the discipline. Given current concerns of climate change impacts on the natural environment, the spread of invasives, increased fire frequency, and anthropogenic influences on the natural environment, palaeoenvironmental data and inferences are increasingly being utilised outside of the palaeoenvironmental discipline, providing a valuable inter-disciplinary platform for global change science in the region. Relative to the size, landscape and climatic heterogeneity and resultant biome variability across southern Africa, the network of palaeoenvironmental study sites remains sparse, and arguably insufficient to resolve key debates. This paper critically reviews these spatial gaps in palaeoenvironmental knowledge, with a particular emphasis on the shortfalls of the current network of study sites and palaeoenvironmental records in resolving debates concerning latitudinal shifts of the Westerlies, conditions during the last glacial maximum and contemporaneous Northern and Southern Hemisphere climatic events. Southern African applications of palaeoenvironmental science in exploring ecological trait shifts, fire influences and anthropogenic impacts are briefly discussed, to facilitate the future identification of key sites, proxies, debates and applications in ongoing regional Quaternary work.