Diversity and palaeoecological significance of non-pollen palynomorph assemblages in East African lake sediments

In tropical Africa the palaeoecological visibility of (pre)historical human impact on natural ecosystems is strongly impeded by a dominant signature of climate change at decade-to-century and millennial scales. Better knowledge of the relative magnitude of past human impact is, however, instrumental to properly assess the resilience, and recovery potential, of Africa's natural ecosystems. In this study, we combined taxonomic, ecological and palaeoecological approaches to validate fossil non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs), i.e. non-pollen micro-remains from fungi and selected groups of algae, vascular plants and invertebrates, as palaeoenvironmental indicators for climate change and human impact on East African ecosystems

Archaeology · Biology · Geography · Paleoecology · Pollen · Aging, Elder Care, and Social Issues · Anthropology · Health, Medicine and Society · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · Ecology · Geology · Paleontology