scope:

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.