Vegetation history along an altitudinal gradient in the Southern Ethiopian Rift Valley: the role of men and climate

Severely degraded landforms, widespread in Ethiopia, are often seen as a consequence of unsustainable human activities. However, in Ethiopia only a limited amount of studies have tried to reconstruct ancient landscapes, and evidence is insufficient to attribute the landscape degradation to anthropogenic causes. Moreover, the specific role of men and climate on landscape evolution and degradation is still unknown. This project aims to address these research gaps, by a combination of microfossil data, biogeochemical and biomolecular data and vegetation models. Several lakes and swamps will be studied in the Southern Ethiopian Rift Valley to cover temporal and spatial vegetation dynamics. As such, the project seeks to quantify the relative role humans and climate have played in changing the vegetation history along an altitudinal gradient in the Southern Ethiopian Rift Valley.
By studying how several elements of the Ethiopian landscape changed over time, in relation to human activities and climate change, we will increase our understanding of how these ecosystems function and behave. A better insight in this functioning will lead to better predictions of the effects of future climatic and land use changes on the southern Ethiopian landscape, and can help to decide which management will be needed to create a livable environment, sustainable on the long term.