The Vetenskapsrådet (VR, Swedish Research Council) in association with Sida and Formas has funded a multiyear project titled ‘Adaptation & Resilience to Climate Change‘ that runs parallel and has overlapping focal areas to the REAL project. The grant forms part of the VR/Sida/Formas Sustainability and resilience – Tackling climate and environmental change research programme. The project is lead by Paul Lane at Uppsala University/University of Cambridge and involves Anneli Ekblom (Uppsala University), Linus Munishi (Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology, Arusha), and Rob Marchant (York). Claudia Capitani (York), Colin Courtney-Mustaphi (University of Basel), Rebecca Kariuki (NM-AIST) and Anna Shoemaker (Uppsala University) will be spearheading new projects, participatory events, and outreach components in the coming years focused in and around northwest Tanzania, including Serengeti National Park. The project timeline began in 2017 and completed at the closing of 2020, but the project continues with a no-cost extension into 2021 with several additional research outputs and stakeholder communications planned. In 2020, Anna Shoemaker undertook an academic exchange with the Department of Biology, Queen’s University, in Kingston, ON, Canada.
Team Members:
Prof. Paul Lane (University of Cambridge and Uppsala University) – Principal investigator
Dr. Linus Munishi (Nelson Mandela University AIST) – Researcher
Dr. Anneli Ekblom (Uppsala University) – Researcher
Prof. Rob Marchant (KITE, University of York) – Researcher
Dr. Rebecca Kariuki (Nelson Mandela University AIST) – Post-doctoral researcher
Dr. Anna Shoemaker (Uppsala University) – Post-doctoral researcher
Collaborators:
Dr. Claudia Capitani (KITE, University of York) – Collaborator
Dr. Colin Courtney-Mustaphi (University of Basel, Switzerland) – Research Assistant
and Former Project Member (2017-2018 Uppsala University) – Post-doctoral researcher
The project has several phases:
1) participatory stakeholder workshops to identify local drivers of change and future trajectories led by Tanzania-based scientists.
2) developing a modelling framework for projecting future land use and land cover changes at subregional scales. The KESHO approach (Capitani et al., 2016).
3) the collection and collation of published and new palaeoenvironmental and archaeological datasets from northwest Tanzania as an extension of the PAGES Global Landcover6k initiative.
We are now in the planning phase to delimit knowledge gap regions for new palaeoenvironmental and archaeological datasets useful to multiple scientific disciplines (social sciences, modern ecology, landscape geomorphology) and to define stakeholder and public locations for participatory mapping and assessment of local trajectories of landscape change. Please contact us if you are interested in participating in workshops or for collaborating in overlapping projects!
Project Publications
Morrison, K.D., Hammer, E., Boles, O., Madella, M., Whitehouse, N., Gaillard, M.-J., Bates, J., Vander Linden, M., Merlo, S., Yao, A., Popova, L., Hill, A.C., Antolin, F., Bauer, A., Biagetti, S., Bishop, R.R., Buckland, P., Cruz, P., Dreslerová, D., Dusseldorp, G., Ellis, E., Filipovic, D., Foster, T., Hannaford, M.J., Harrison, S.P., Hazarika, M., Herold, H., Hilpert, J., Kaplan, J.O., Kay, A., Klein Goldewijk, K., Kolář, J., Kyazike, E., Laabs, J., Lancelotti, C., Lane, P., Lawrence, D., Lewis, K., Lombardo, U., Lucarini, G., Arroyo-Kalin, M., Marchant, R., Mayle, F., McClatchie, M., McLeester, M., Mooney, S., Moskal-del Hoyo, M., Navarrete, V., Ndiema, E., Góes Neves, E., Nowak, M., Out, W.A., Petrie, C., Phelps, L.N., Pinke, Z., Rostain, S., Russell, T., Sluyter, A., Styring, A.K., Tamanaha, E., Thomas, E., Veerasamy, S., Welton, L., Zanon, M., 2021. Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization. PLOS ONE 16, e0246662 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246662
Petek-Sargeant N, Lane PJ. in press 2021. Weathering Climate Change in Archaeology: Conceptual Challenges and an East African Case Study. Cambridge Archaeological Journal. p1-18. DOI: 10.1017/S0959774321000044
Kariuki, RW, Munishi L, Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Capitani C, Shoemaker A, Lane P, Marchant R. 2021. Integrating stakeholders’ perspectives and spatial modelling to develop scenarios of future land use and land cover change in northern Tanzania. PLoS ONE 16(2): e0245516. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245516 [Open Access] Data: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m63xsj417
Githumbi E, Courtney Mustaphi C, Marchant R. 2021. Late Pleistocene and Holocene Afromontane vegetation variability at a headwater wetland within the Eastern Mau Forest, Kenya. Journal of Quaternary Science 36(2), 239-254. DOI: 10.1002/jqs.3267
Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Kinyanjui R, Shoemaker A, Mumbi C, Muiruri V, Marchant L, Rucina S, Marchant R. 2021. A 3000-year record of vegetation changes and fire at a high-elevation wetland on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Quaternary Research 99, 34-62. doi: 10.1017/qua.2020.76
Phelps, L.N., Chevalier, M., Shanahan, T.M., Aleman, J.C., Courtney-Mustaphi, C., Kiahtipes, C.A., Broennimann, O., Marchant, R., Shekeine, J., Quick, L.J., Davis, B.A.S., Guisan, A., Manning, K. 2020. Asymmetric response of forest and grassy biomes to climate variability across the African Humid Period: influenced by anthropogenic disturbance? Ecography 43(8), 1118-1142. doi: 10.1111/ecog.04990 [Supplementary Materials https://www.ecography.org/appendix/ecog-04990]
Munishi, L.K., Courtney Mustaphi, C.J., Marchant, R. 2020. Observation of an adult female oribi with leucistic pelage in Lobo, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. African Journal of Ecology 58(1): 129-132.
Newman RJS, Capitani C, Courtney-Mustaphi C, Thorn JPR, Kariuki R, Enns C, Marchant R. 2020. Integrating insights from social‐ecological interactions into sustainable land use change scenarios for small islands in the western Indian Ocean. Sustainability 12(4), 1340. 23pp. DOI: 10.3390/su12041340
Conolly J, Lane PJ. 2019. Vulnerability, risk, resilience: an introduction. World Archaeology 50(4), 547-553.
Lane, P.J. 2019. Material desires, ecological anxieties, and East African elephant ivory in a long-term perspective. Environmental History 24: 688-694.
Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Capitani C, Boles O, Kariuki R, Newman R, Munishi L, Marchant R, Lane P. 2019. Integrating evidence of land use and land cover change for land management policy formulation along the Kenya-Tanzania borderlands. Anthropocene 28, 100228.
Shoemaker, A., Ekblom, A., Kariuki, R., Munishi, L., Courtney-Mustaphi, C., Marchant, R., and Lane, P. 2019. Poster presented at the Africa, The Cradle of Human Diversity conference, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Probert J, Parr C, Holdo RM, Anderson TM, Archibald S, Courtney Mustaphi C, Dobson A, Donaldson JE, Hempson G, Hopcraft JGC, Morrison TA, Beale CM. 2019. Anthropogenic modifications to fire regimes in the wider Serengeti-Mara ecosystem. Global Change Biology 25(10), 3406-3423.
Boles O, Shoemaker A, Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Petek N, Ekblom A, Lane P. 2019. Historical ecologies of pastoralist overgrazing in Kenya: long-term perspectives on cause and effect. Human Ecology 47(3), 419–434.
Courtney Mustaphi, C.J., Brahney, J., Aquino-López, M.A., Goring, S., Orton, K., Noronha, A., Czaplewski, J., Asena, Q., Paton, S.C., Brushworth, J.P., 2019. Guidelines for reporting and archiving 210Pb sediment chronologies to improve fidelity and extend data lifecycle. Quaternary Geochronology 52, 77-87.
Ekblom, A.; Shoemaker, A.; Gillson, L.; Lane, P.; Lindholm, K.-J. Conservation through Biocultural Heritage—Examples from Sub-Saharan Africa. Land 2019, 8, 5.
Courtney-Mustaphi CJ, Colombaroli D, Vannière B, Adolf C, Bremond L, Aleman J, the Global Paleofire Working Group (GPWG2). 2018. African fire histories and fire ecologies. PAGES Magazine 26(2), 88.
Boles O, Courtney-Mustaphi C, Richer S, Marchant R. 2018. Joining the dots of land-use and land-cover change in Eastern Africa. PAGES Past Global Changes Magazine 26(1), p.16-17.
Beale CM, Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Morrison TA, Archibald S, Anderson TM, Dobson AP, Donaldson JE, Hempson GP, Probert J, Parr CL. 2018. Pyrodiversity interacts with rainfall to increase bird and mammal richness in African savannas. Ecology Letters 21(4): 557–567.
Githumbi E, Kariuki R, Shoemaker A, Courtney Mustaphi C, Chuhila M, Richer S, Lane P, Marchant R. 2018. Pollen, people and place: paleoenvironmental, archaeological, and ecological perspectives on vegetation change in the Amboseli landscape, Kenya. Frontiers in Earth Science 5 Article 113: 1-26. DOI: 10.3389/feart.2017.00113
Aleman, J.C., Hennebelle, A., Vannière, B., Blarquez, O., the Global Paleofire Working Group. 2018. Sparking New Opportunities for Charcoal-Based Fire History Reconstructions. Fire 1(1), 7. DOI: 10.3390/fire1010007
Marchant R, Richer S, Boles O, Capitani C, Courtney-Mustaphi C, Lane P, Prendergast M, Stump D, Wynne-Jones S, Ferro Vázquez C, Wright D, Boivin N, Lang C, Kay A, Phelps L, Fuller D, Widgren M, Punwong P, Lejju J, Gaillard-Lemdahl M-J, Morrison KD, Kaplan J, Benard J, Crowther A, Cuní-Sanchez A, de Cort G, Deere N, Ekblom A, Farmer J, Finch J, Gillson L, Githumbi E, Kabora T, Kariuki R, Kinyanjui R, Kyazike E, Muiruri V, Mumbi C, Muthoni R, Muzuka A, Ndiema E, Nzabandora C, Olago D, Onjala D, Pas Schrijver A, Petek N, Platts PJ, Rucina S, Shoemaker A, Thornton-Barnett S, van der Plas G, Watson L, Williamson D. 2018. Drivers and trajectories of land cover change in East Africa: human and environmental interactions from 6000 years ago to present. Earth-Science Reviews 178: 322-378.
Githumbi EN*, Courtney Mustaphi CJ*, Yun KJ, Muiruri V, Rucina SM, Marchant R. 2018. Late Holocene wetland transgression and 500 years of vegetation and fire variability in the semi-arid Amboseli landscape, southern Kenya. Ambio – A Journal of the Human Environment 47(6), pp 682–696. *equal contribution
Pfeifer M, Andrew B, Calders K, Cayuela L, Courtney-Mustaphi C, Cuní-Sanchez A, Deere N, Denu D, Gonsamo A, Gonzalez de Tanago J, Hayward R, Lau A, Macia MJ, Marchant R, Ledo A, Marshall AR, Olivier P, Paine CET, Pellikka P, Hamidu S, Shirima D, Trevithick R, Wedeux B, Wheeler C, Woodgate W, Platts PJ. 2018. Tropical forest canopies and their relationships with climate and disturbance – results from a global dataset of consistent field-based measurements. Forest Ecosystems 5: 7. doi: 10.1186/s40663-017-0118-7
Seki HA, Shirima DD, Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Marchant R, Munishi PKT. 2018. The impact of land use and land cover change on biodiversity within and adjacent Kibasira Swamp in Kilombero valley, Tanzania. African Journal of Ecology 53(6): 518-527. doi: 10.1111/aje.12488
Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Gajewski K, Marchant R, Rosqvist G. 2017. A late Holocene pollen record from proglacial Oblong Tarn, Mount Kenya. PLOS One 12(9): e0184925. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0184925 [Data available from open access Harvard Dataverse]
Marchant R, Courtney-Mustaphi C, Githumbi E. 2017. Entangled ecosystem-people-animal interactions: perspectives from East African savannas. Past Global Changes Magazine (PAGES), 25(2), 80–81. DOI:10.22498/pages.25.2.80
Lane, P.J., IN PRESS 2017. Domesticating East African landscapes – substantive data, theoretical frameworks and roles for archaeology in sustainable development. In N. Sanz and J-P. Vielle-Calzada (eds.) The Origin and Evolution of Food Production and its Impact on Consumption Patterns. Mexico City & Paris: UNESCO.
Lane, P.J. and Shoemaker, A. 2017. Interdisciplinary perspectives on precolonial sub-Saharan African farming and herding communities. In T. Spear (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. New York: Oxford University Press (online publication). doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.7
Eriksson, O., Ekblom, A., Lane, P.J., Lennartsson, T., and Lindholm, K-J. 2017. Developing an integrative conceptual framework for historical ecology: Niche construction and landscape domestication. In C. Crumley, T. Lennartsson and A. Westin (eds.) Essays in Historical Ecology: Is There a Future without the Past? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 145-181.
Presentations, Posters and Workshops
Courtney-Mustaphi CJ, Kinyanjui R, Kariuki R, Muiruri V, Shoemaker A, Mumbi C, Rucina SM, Marchant R. Vegetation change on Africa’s highest mountain. 79th International Conference of the University of Latvia – Ecosystems and fire. University of Latvia, Riga. 28 January 2021. via Zoom.
Kinyanjui, Rahab, and ARCC collaborators. 2020. “Phytolith research in East Africa: Major milestones, opportunities and challenges“. Via Zoom from NMK, Nairobi. PAGES ECN webinar series: The paleoresearch landscape in Africa – Lessons learnt from East Africa.
Shoemaker, A., Kariuki, R., Courtney-Mustaphi, C., Munishi, L., Capitani, C., Ekblom, A., Marchant, R., and Lane, P. 2020. Adaptation & Resilience to Climate Change Project [poster]. Swiss Researching Africa Days 2020. Swiss Society for African Studies 24-25 October 2020. University of Bern.
![Adaptation & Resilience to Climate Change Project [poster]](http://www.real-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ARCC-poster-general-2019-Swiss-edition-Aug2020.jpg){kind=link}
Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Kinyanjui R, Shoemaker A, Muiruri V, Mumbi C, Marchant L, Rucina SM, Marchant R. 2020. Land cover changes at the Kenya-Tanzania border. Seminar via Zoom, hosted by University of York chai tea break seminar, 23 April 2020.
Shoemaker, A., Ekblom, A., Kariuki, R., Munishi, L., Courtney-Mustaphi, C., Marchant, R., and Lane, P. 2019. Poster presented at the Africa, The Cradle of Human Diversity conference, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Courtney Mustaphi, CJ. 2019. Pollen analysis and land management. Global Historical Ecology Cluster Day, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Sweden, 4 December 2019.
Courtney Mustaphi, CJ. 2019. Land use and land cover changes in western Serengeti over the past few hundred years. 17th Swiss Geoscience Meeting, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, 23 November 2019.
Courtney Mustaphi CJ. 2019. Vegetation change on Africa’s highest mountain. Seminar, University of Basel, 22 October 2019.
Kariuki R, Capitani C, Courtney Mustaphi, CJ. [Session Conveners]. 2019. Reconstructing past landscapes to simulate future sustainable scenarios through multidisciplinary approaches. IALE World Congress July 1-5 2019, Milano, Italy.
Courtney Mustaphi CJ. 2019. Land cover changes at the Kenya-Tanzania border. Seminar, University of Basel, 15 May 2019.
Courtney Mustaphi CJ. 2019. Are colluvial soils on kopjes a potential geoarchive of palaeoenvironmental change in semi-arid regions? Seminar, University of Basel, 25 February 2019.
Courtney Mustaphi CJ. 2019. Are colluvial soils on kopjes a potential geoarchive of palaeoenvironmental change in semi-arid regions? Twenty-Seventh Meeting of Swiss Sedimentologists SwissSed – University of Fribourg, 23 February 2019.
Beale CM, Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Morrison TA, Archibald S, Anderson TM, Dobson AP, Donaldson JE, Hempson GP, Probert J, Parr CL. 2018. Pyrodiversity and the distribution of bird and mammal diversity in African savannahs. British Ecological Society (BES), Edinburgh, 19 December 2018.
Courtney Mustaphi, CJ. 2018. Investigating historical patterns of (wild?)fire. 16 October 2018, Current Studies in Geoecology seminar, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland.
Courtney Mustaphi, CJ; Marchant, R. 2018. Communicating environmental change in semi-arid regions of eastern Africa [Video and oral presentation]. 19 July 2018, African Quaternary Association AFQUA (15-19 July 2018), NMK, Nairobi, Kenya.
Courtney Mustaphi, CJ. 16th annual Savanna Science Network Meeting in Skukuza, Kruger National Park, South Africa, 4-8 March 2018, organised by SANParks and SAEON.
C. Courtney Mustaphi; R. Marchant; et al. 2017. East Africa Earth-Science Review. PAGES OSM May 9-13 2017, Zaragoza, Spain.
Lane P, Marchant R, Courntey-Mustaphi C. 2017. African Archaeology Research Day, AARD 2017. 25 November at the Department of Archaeology, University of York.
