A Record of Environmental Change from the Orange River mudbelt, South Africa
by
Catherine Gray
Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of Cape Town
Coauthors: Lee-Thorp, J.A, Meadows, M.E.

The Orange River system, which drains a large part of the southern African interior plateau, is responsible for large scale transportation of sediment westwards towards the Atlantic Ocean. The sediment is deposited on the inner continental shelf in the form of the Orange River (or Namaqualand) mudbelt. This mudbelt represents a semi-continuous depository of the late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental record and forms an invaluable archive of paleaoenvironmental change. In particular, variations in sedimentation and vegetation; and the effect these changes might have had on the anthropogenic land use, are revealed and could prove valuable to future landuse management. This paper represents results of research conducted on marine cores retrieved from the mudbelt. Radiocarbon, Lead (210) analyses, palynological and sedimentological analyses have been carried out, in addition to carbon stable light isotope and flood analysis.

Date received: April 30, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cahi-55.