Jörgen Runge – Författare

The environmental setting within the Central Sahara was subject to considerable changes during Late Quaternary, mainly driven by major global climate variations, although human impact increased constantly since Early Holocene.Such global events can be reconstructed with the help of reliefs, sediments and palaeosoils and their specific morphological, chemical and mineralogical properties. The project’s focus is to ascertain new and established data on climate variations and associated palaeoenvironmental changes within the Central Sahara and to systematically collate and correlate them to results obtained from the Afro-Asian dry land belt and adjacent areas. The joint analysis of Late Quaternary landscape development and present environmental conditions in the Central Sahara will result in the modelling of Late Pleistocene and Holocene palaeoenvironments, emphasising various aspects. This book will be of interest to all concerned with environmental changes in desert ecosystems in the past and at present and related development problems of Saharan countries, especially Ecologists, Botanists, Earth scientists and Climatologists. It will be valuable for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates as a reference for review and overview articles as well as a source of information for new original manuscripts on the topic of Late Pleistocene and Holocene landscape evolution in the lower latitudes of Africa. Palaeobotanists, Palynologists, Geomorphologists and Quaternarists will equally find this edition useful for their work.

This 30st jubilee volume (2010) of "Palaeoecology of Africa" looks back and reflects the "state of the art" of what is actually known on former African climates and ecosystems in the format of review articles authored by specialists in the field. New research articles on climate and ecosystem dynamics as well as applied topics on geomorphic hazards and future environmental trends in Africa are included.This book will be of interest to all concerned with ecosystems dynamics, tropical forests, savannahs, deserts and related development problems of third world countries, especially ecologists, botanists, earth scientists (e.g. Quaternary and recent climate change), regional planners. It will also be valuable for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates as a reference for review and overview articles as well as a source of information for new original manuscripts and reviews on the state of the art of long term and Quaternary and Holocene landscape evolution esp. in subsaharan Africa. Palaeobotanists, Palynologists and Quaternarists will equally find this edition useful for their work.

Founded in 1966, the internationally recognized and acclaimed Series ‘Palaeoecology of Africa’ publishes interdisciplinary scientific papers on landscape evolution and on former environments of the African continent. Beginning with topics such as changes in climate and vegetation cover, the papers expand horizons and interconnections to various types of environmental dynamics from the Cainozoic up to the present; moreover, the aspect of human influence since the Late Quaternary is related to many of the areas studied.Volume 31 presents four comprehensive papers on long- and short-term processes of landscape evolution (geological history, neotectonics and proxy Quaternary alluvia), as well as a recent regional perspective on environmental problems in Southern Cameroon. The book acts as a showcase for successful North-South cooperation and capacity building for empowering African Universities. It is problem oriented and applied, and illustrates how scientific and interdisciplinary cooperation can work. In the framework of the German Research Foundation’s (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) funded "Rain Forest Savanna Contact" project (2003-2009) two abbreviated English versions of PhD theses are here published, one by J. Eisenberg on neotectonics and the other by M. Sangen on river sediments in rain forest-savanna transitional zones. Complementary articles are an introduction on geological history, by B. Kankeu et al. and a paper on environmental risks by M. Tchindjang et al., together these complete the results of this joint German-Cameroonian research project.This book will be of interest to all concerned with ecosystems dynamics, tropical forests, savannas and related development problems of Third World countries, especially regional planners, ecologists, botanists, earth scientists and students of the Quaternary (e.g. LGM and Holocene ecosystem dynamics, Global Change). It will be valuable for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates as a reference for new research articles on the topic of long‐term geologic‐tectonic and Quaternary landscape evolution in an up‐to‐now not well explored marginal area of the Western Congo basin.