HR: 16:00h
AN: U14A-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Simulated Trends in African Glacial and Interglacial Vegetation: Implications for Late-Pleistocene Hominid-Plant Interactions
AU: * Cowling, S A
EM: cowling@geog.utoronto.ca
AF: University of Toronto, Department of Geography 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S3G3 Canada
AU: Cox, P M
EM: peter.cox@metoffice.com
AF: UK Met Office, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research Fitzroy Road (Devon), Exeter, EX1 3PB United Kingdom
AU: Jones, C D
EM: chris.d.jones@metoffice.com
AF: UK Met Office, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research Fitzroy Road (Devon), Exeter, EX1 3PB United Kingdom
AU: Maslin, M A
EM: mmaslin@geog.ucl.ac.uk
AF: University College London, Department of Geography 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP United Kingdom
AU: Spall, S A
AF: UK Met Office, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research Fitzroy Road (Devon), Exeter, EX1 3PB United Kingdom
AB: Most theories of human evolution in south, central and eastern Africa are predicated on the assumption that savannas and grasslands almost exclusively dominated Pleistocene (glacial) landscapes. It was our aim to evaluate this assumption using a state-of-the-art fully-coupled earth system model (HadCM3LC), which we used to predict potential palaeovegetation following representative glacial and interglacial climate-forcing. Our glacial simulations indicate that tropical broadleaf forest was not severely displaced by grassland expanding into central Africa, although the outer extent of closed forest decreases, particularly in the north. Our vegetation-climate simulations also indicate that the extent of closed tropical forest during typical interglacials is not represented by today's observed vegetation distributions. Simulated interglacial climate results in expansion of tropical forest from coast-to-coast across much of central Africa. Our modelling experiments have implications for interpreting biogeography and phylogenies of various African plant and animal species, including the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens sapiens.
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting