Continental Pans in Southern Africa and their Potential as Paleoclimatic and Paleoecological Geoarchives
2022
Belz, Lukas
Reconstruction of Quaternary climate data in southern Africa plays an important role to estimate regional climate mechanisms and the vulnerability to global environmental influences. In this study environmental data was reconstructed via biomarkers of salt pan sediments from eastern Namibia. The focus was laid on the assemblage of leaf wax n alkanes and their composition of carbon and hydrogen isotopes. The data shows dynamic changes around 18000 And 12000 years before present and a tendency to dryer conditions during the Holocene. There were challenges with the reconstruction of hydrological conditions via hydrogen isotopes and new potentials in variations of relative concentrations of long chain n alkanes. The study shows that salt pans are an usable archive to close paleoclimatic gaps in central southern Africa.
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