Hydroclimate changes in eastern Africa over the past 200,000 years may have influenced early human dispersal

AbstractReconstructions of climatic and environmental conditions can contribute to current debates about the factors that influenced early human dispersal within and beyond Africa. Here we analyse a 200,000-year multi-proxy paleoclimate record from Chew Bahir, a tectonic lake basin in the southern Ethiopian rift. Our record reveals two modes of climate change, both associated temporally and regionally with a specific type of human behavior. The first is a long-term trend towards greater aridity between 200,000 and 60,000 years ago, modulated by precession-driven wet-dry cycles. Here, more favorable wetter environmental conditions may have facilitated long-range human expansion into new territory, while less favorable dry periods may have led to spatial constriction and isolation of local human populations. The second mode of climate change observed since 60,000 years ago mimics millennial to centennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and Heinrich events. We hypothesize that human populations may have responded to these shorter climate fluctuations with local dispersal between montane and lowland habitats.

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Religion and Climate Change: Rain Rituals in Israel, China, and Haiti

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel11110554 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (11) ◽

pp. 554

Author(s):

Gerald Murray ◽

Haiyan Xing

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Northwest China ◽

Human Populations ◽

Climate Fluctuations ◽

African Rainfall ◽

Urban Minorities ◽

Anthropological Fieldwork ◽

Religious Systems ◽

Climate Crisis

Human populations confront three distinct climate challenges: (1) seasonal climate fluctuations, (2) sporadic climate crises, and (3) long term climate change. Religious systems often attribute climate crises to the behavior of invisible spirits. They devise rituals to influence the spirits, and do so under the guidance of religious specialists. They devise two types of problem-solving rituals: anticipatory climate maintenance rituals, to request adequate rainfall in the forthcoming planting season, and climate crisis rituals for drought or inundations. The paper compares rainfall rituals in three different settings: Israel (Judaism), Northwest China (ethnic village religion), and Haiti (Vodou). Each author has done anthropological fieldwork in one or more of these settings. In terms of the guiding conceptual paradigm, the analysis applies three sequentially organized analytic operations common in anthropology: (1) detailed description of individual ethnographic systems; (2) comparison and contrast of specific elements in different systems; and (3) attempts at explanation of causal forces shaping similarities and differences. Judaism has paradoxically maintained obligatory daily prayers for rain in Israel during centuries when most Jews lived as urban minorities in the diaspora, before the founding of Israel in 1948. The Tu of Northwest China maintain separate ethnic temples for rainfall rituals not available in the Buddhist temples that all attend. The slave ancestors of Haiti, who incorporated West African rituals into Vodou, nonetheless excluded African rainfall rituals. We attribute this exclusion to slavery itself; slaves have little interest in performing rituals for the fertility of the fields of their masters. At the end of the paper, we identify the causal factors that propelled each systems into a climate-management trajectory different from that of the others. We conclude by identifying a common causal factor that exerts a power over religion in general and that has specifically influenced the climate responses of all three religious systems.

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Testing Farmers’ Perception of Climate Variability: A Case Study from Kirtipur of Kathmandu Valley

Hydro Nepal Journal of Water Energy and Environment ◽

10.3126/hn.v11i1.7200 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 30-34

Author(s):

Jiban Mani Poudel

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Variability ◽

Global Climate ◽

Climatic Variability ◽

Global Perspective ◽

Kathmandu Valley ◽

Climatic Fluctuations ◽

Climate Fluctuations ◽

Global And Local

In the 21st century, global climate change has become a public and political discourse. However, there is still a wide gap between global and local perspectives. The global perspective focuses on climate fluctuations that affect the larger region; and their analysis is based on long-term records over centuries and millennium. By comparison, local peoples’ perspectives vary locally, and local analyses are limited to a few days, years, decades and generations only. This paper examines how farmers in Kirtipur of Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, understand climate variability in their surroundings. The researcher has used a cognized model to understand farmers’ perception on weather fluctuations and climate change. The researcher has documented several eyewitness accounts of farmers about weather fluctuations which they have been observing in a lifetime. The researcher has also used rainfall data from 1970-2009 to test the accuracy of perceptions. Unlike meteorological analyses, farmers recall and their understanding of climatic variability by weather-crop interaction, and events associating with climatic fluctuations and perceptions are shaped by both physical visibility and cultural frame or belief system.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/hn.v11i1.7200 Hydro Nepal Special Issue: Conference Proceedings 2012 pp.30-34

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Why economics matters for understanding the effects of climate change on fisheries

ICES Journal of Marine Science ◽

10.1093/icesjms/fss021 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 69 (7) ◽

pp. 1160-1167 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Alan C. Haynie ◽

Lisa Pfeiffer

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Conceptual Framework ◽

Environmental Conditions ◽

Economic Factors ◽

Marine Science ◽

Biological Factors ◽

Climate Effects ◽

Economic Mechanisms

Abstract Haynie, A. C., and Pfeiffer, L. 2012. Why economics matters for understanding the effects of climate change on fisheries. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: . Research attempting to predict the effect of climate change on fisheries often neglects to consider how harvesters respond to changing economic, institutional, and environmental conditions, which leads to the overly simplistic prediction of “fisheries follow fish”. However, climate effects on fisheries can be complex because they arise through physical, biological, and economic mechanisms that interact or may not be well understood. Although most researchers find it obvious to include physical and biological factors in predicting the effects of climate change on fisheries, the behaviour of fish harvesters also matters for these predictions. A general but succinct conceptual framework for investigating the effects of climate change on fisheries that incorporates the biological and economic factors that determine how fisheries operate is presented. The use of this framework will result in more complete, reliable, and relevant investigations of the effects of climate change on fisheries. The uncertainty surrounding long-term projections, however, is inherent in the complexity of the system.

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Climate change effects on marine renewable energy resources and environmental conditions for offshore aquaculture in Europe

ICES Journal of Marine Science ◽

10.1093/icesjms/fsaa226 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Carlos V C Weiss ◽

Melisa Menendez ◽

Bárbara Ondiviela ◽

Raúl Guanche ◽

Iñigo J Losada ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Renewable Energy ◽

Environmental Conditions ◽

Energy Resources ◽

Renewable Energy Resources ◽

Energy Potential ◽

Holistic View ◽

Marine Renewable Energy ◽

Offshore Aquaculture

Abstract The development of the marine renewable energy and offshore aquaculture sectors is susceptible to being affected by climate change. Consequently, for the long-term planning of these activities, a holistic view on the effects of climate change on energy resources and environmental conditions is required. Based on present climate and future climate scenario, favourable conditions for wind and wave energy exploitation and for farming six marine fish species are assessed using a suitability index over all European regional seas. Regarding available energy potential, the estimated changes in climate do not have direct impacts on the geographic distribution of potential regions for the energy industry (both wind and wave based), that is they pose no threat to this industry. Long-term changes in environmental conditions could however require adaptation of the aquaculture sector and especially of its exploitation areas. Opportunities for aquaculture expansion of the assessed species are identified. Possibilities for co-location of these activities are observed in the different climate scenarios. The evaluation of potential zones for the exploitation of marine renewable energy resources and offshore aquaculture represents a stepping-stone, useful for improving decision-making and assisting in the management of marine economies both in the short-term and in the long-term development of these sectors.

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Human responses to hydroclimate fluctuations over the last 200 kyr in Ethiopia

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-11488 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Frank Schäbitz ◽

Verena Foerster ◽

Asfawossen Asrat ◽

Andrew S. Cohen ◽

Melissa S. Chapot ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Environmental Change ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Homo Sapiens ◽

Human Mobility ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Eastern Africa ◽

Southern Ethiopia ◽

Ethiopian Rift ◽

Mobility Patterns

Humans have been adapting to more demanding habitats in the course of their evolutionary history. Nevertheless, environmental changes coupled with overpopulation naturally limit competition for resources. In order to find such limits, reconstructions of climate and population changes are increasingly used for the continent of our origin, Africa. However, continuous and high-resolution records of climate-human interactions are still scarce. Using a 280 m sediment core from Chew Bahir*, a wide tectonic basin in southern Ethiopia, we reconstruct the paleoenvironmental conditions during the development of Homo sapiens. The complete multiproxy record of the composite core covers the last ~600 ka , allowing tests of hypotheses about the influence of climate change on human evolution and technological innovation from the Late Acheulean to the Middle/Late Stone Age, and on dispersal within and out of Africa. Here we present results from the uppermost 100 meters of the Chew Bahir core, spanning the last 200 kiloyears (ka). The record shows two modes of environmental change that are associated with two types of human mobility. The first mode is a long-term trend towards a more arid climate, overlain by precession-driven wet-dry alternation. Through comparison with the archaeological record, humid episodes appear to have led to the opening of &#8216;green&#8217; networks between favourable habitats and thus to increased human mobility on a regional scale. The second mode of environmental change resembles millennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events, which seem to coincide with enhanced vertical mobility from the Ethiopian rift to the highlands, especially in the time frame between ~65&#8211;21 ka BP. The coincidence of climate change and human mobility patterns help to define the limiting conditions for early Homo sapiens in eastern Africa.___________________* cored in the context of HSPDP (Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project) and CRC&#160;(Collaborative Research Centre) 806 &#8220;Our way to Europe&#8221;

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Long-Term Changes of Lake Level and Water Budget in the Nam Co Lake Basin, Central Tibetan Plateau

Journal of Hydrometeorology ◽

10.1175/jhm-d-13-093.1 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 1312-1322 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Yanhong Wu ◽

Hongxing Zheng ◽

Bing Zhang ◽

Dongmei Chen ◽

Liping Lei

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Tibetan Plateau ◽

Water Budget ◽

Lake Level ◽

Lake Basin ◽

The Tibetan Plateau ◽

Nam Co ◽

Long Term Changes ◽

Nam Co Lake

Abstract Long-term changes in the water budget of lakes in the Tibetan Plateau due to climate change are of great interest not only for the importance of water management, but also for the critical challenge due to the lack of observations. In this paper, the water budget of Nam Co Lake during 1980–2010 is simulated using a dynamical monthly water balance model. The simulated lake level is in good agreement with field investigations and the remotely sensed lake level. The long-term hydrological simulation shows that from 1980 to 2010, lake level rose from 4718.34 to 4724.93 m, accompanied by an increase of lake water storage volume from 77.33 × 109 to 83.66 × 109 m3. For the net lake level rise (5.93 m) during the period 1980–2010, the proportional contributions of rainfall–runoff, glacier melt, precipitation on the lake, lake percolation, and evaporation are 104.7%, 56.6%, 41.7%, −22.2%, and −80.9%, respectively. A positive but diminishing annual water surplus is found in Nam Co Lake, implying a continuous but slowing rise in lake level as a hydrological consequence of climate change.

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The Dynamic Change of Bosten Lake Area in Response to Climate in the Past 30 Years

Water ◽

10.3390/w12010004 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 4 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Xiaoai Dai ◽

Xingping Yang ◽

Meilian Wang ◽

Yu Gao ◽

Senhao Liu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Surface Area ◽

Water Body ◽

Meteorological Factors ◽

Lake Basin ◽

Bosten Lake ◽

Water Index ◽

The Past ◽

Normalized Difference Water Index

The widely distributed lakes, as one of the major components of the inland water system, are the primary available freshwater resources on the earth and are sensitive to accelerated climate change and extensive human activities. Lakes play an important role in the terrestrial water cycle and biogeochemical cycle and substantially influence the health of humans living in the surrounding areas. Given the importance of lakes in the ecosystem, long-term monitoring of dynamic changes has important theoretical and practical significance. Here, we extracted water body information and monitored the long-term dynamics of Bosten Lake, which is the largest inland lake in China. We quantified the meteorological factors of the study area from the observation data of meteorological stations between 1988 and 2018. The characteristics of climate change and its correlation with the change of area in the Bosten Lake Basin in the past 30 years were analyzed. The major contributions of this study are as follows: (1) The initial water body was segmented based on the water index model Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) with a pre-assigned threshold value. The results were evaluated with the area extracted through artificial visual interpretation. Then we conducted mathematical morphology operators, opening and closing operations, and median filter to eliminate noise to ensure the accuracy of water body information extraction from the Bosten Lake. A long-term water surface area database of the Bosten Lake was established from high-resolution remote sensing images during 1988–2018. (2) Due to the seasonal difference of snow, ice content, and other objects on images, the areadynamics of Bosten Lake in the recent 30 years were analyzed separately in dry season and rainy season. The water surface area of Bosten Lake showed large inter-annual variations between 1988–2018. (3) Based on the assumption that climatic change has more direct effects on lake than human activities, six meteorological factors were selected to analyze the impacts of climate change on the annual mean lake surface area. The result indicated that in the past 30 years, climate conditions in the Bosten Lake Basin fluctuated greatly. We conducted correlations analysis between the areal dynamics of the Bosten Lake and the meteorological factors. Here, the annual average evaporation had the highest correlation with the areal dynamics of Bosten Lake followed by air temperature, precipitation, sunshine hours, and relative humidity, while the annual average wind speed had the weakest correlation.

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Early Human Civilizations and River Deltas

Deltas and Humans ◽

10.1093/oso/9780199764174.003.0006 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas S. Bianchi

Keyword(s):

Human Populations ◽

Old World ◽

Food Transport ◽

Primary Focus ◽

Definition Of ◽

The Relationship ◽

Early Human

For millennia, humans have been dependent upon rivers and their resources for food, transport, and irrigation, and by mid-Holocene times (about 5,000 years ago), humans harnessed hydraulic power that in part contributed to the rise of civilization. It is generally accepted that the earliest civilizations to develop such linkages with irrigation and cultivation of crops arose in the Old World, in Mesopotamia and the Levant, the Indus Valley, and the Central Kingdom, associated with, respectively, the Tigris, Jordan, Euphrates, and Nile; the Indus; and the Huang He (Yellow) and Changjiang (Yangtze) rivers—and, of course, their associated deltas. In this chapter, I examine the role of selected coastal deltas that were important in the development of these early Old World civilizations, and how those people began to alter the shape and character of the highly productive and constantly changing deltaic environments. Before we begin, however, I need to provide some basic definitions. First, I use the definition of civilization provided by Hassan, “a phenomenon of large societies with highly differentiated sectors of activities interrelated in a complex network of exchanges and obligations.” Second, I use the definition of delta presented by Overeem, Syvitski, and Hutton, “a discrete shoreline protuberance formed where a river enters an ocean or lake, … a broadly lobate shape in plain view narrowing in the direction of the feeding river, and a significant proportion of the deposit … derived from the river”. Although I will at times discuss linkages between development of human settlements and river reaches upstream from the coastal delta, my primary focus in this chapter is on coastal deltaic regions, in particular those of the Nile, Indus, Yellow, and Yangtze rivers, which provide the best examples for linkages between relatively recent early human populations and coastal deltas. I will address other deltas later in the book. My rationale for beginning this book with a discussion of the relationship between Old World civilizations and deltas is that this long- term interaction has been so dramatically altered over the past few millennia— essentially, it is a good relationship “gone bad.”

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Seabird Tissue Archival and Monitoring Project (STAMP) Data from 1999-2010

Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology ◽

10.6028/jres.126.028 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 126 ◽

Author(s):

Nathan A. Mahynski ◽

Vincent K. Shen ◽

Jared M. Ragland ◽

Stacy S. Schuur ◽

Rebecca Pugh

Keyword(s):

South Carolina ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Environmental Conditions ◽

Nesting Behavior ◽

Human Populations ◽

Health Implications ◽

The North ◽

Similar Appearance ◽

Marine Laboratory

The multi-entity, long-term Seabird Tissue Archival and Monitoring Project (STAMP) has collected eggs from various avian species throughout the North Pacifc Ocean for over 20 years to create a geospatial and temporal record of environmental conditions. Over 2,500 samples are currently archived at the NIST Biorepository at Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina. Longitudinal monitoring efforts of this nature provide invaluable data for assessment of both wildlife and human exposures as these species often consume prey (e.g., fish) similar to, and from sources (e.g., oceanic) comparable to, human populations nearby. In some areas, seabird eggs also comprise a signifcant part of subsistence diets providing nutrition for indigenous peoples. Chemometric profles and related health implications are known to differ across species. Eggs, however, can be diffcult to assign to a species unless the bird is observed on the nest from which the sample was collected due to similar appearance within a genus and sympatric nesting behavior. This represents a large point of uncertainty for both wildlife managers and exposure researchers alike.

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The conceptual of re-design propulsion system and ship electricity management to reduce waste emission

Global Journal of Engineering and Technology Advances ◽

10.30574/gjeta.2021.6.2.0021 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 104-113

Author(s):

Abdul Rahman ◽

Antariksa ◽

Bambang Semedi ◽

Slamet Wahyudi

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Support System ◽

United States Navy ◽

Electric Propulsion ◽

The United States ◽

Climate Fluctuations ◽

Natural Processes ◽

Large Benefit ◽

Almost All

Climate change is a serious threat to the environment and socioeconomic globally. Climate change is caused by natural processes and due to human activities that have resulted in long-term climate fluctuations and even globally over the past few decades, the climate has experienced a fairly rapid rise in average temperatures. Climate change is mainly caused due to ozone depletion which results in changes in greenhouse effect conditions. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted standards to reduce sulfur pollution from ships. The majority of naval warships today use conventional mechanical propulsion systems where the power from the main propulsion is transmitted to the propeller through gearboxes. The ships owned by the Navy almost all still use conventional thrust systems with diesel engine starters. With a conventional support system. The latest innovation in the support system that has been carried out, namely on the United States Navy warship TAKE-1 (the destroyer ship), whereby changing the support system from conventional to electricity with the concept of Integrated Fully Electric Propulsion (IFEP) can reduce fuel use by 10% to 25%. IFEP application if applied to ships of the Navy, will obtain a very large benefit in overcoming environmental problems namely reducing air pollution.

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