Kelly Kirsten

Coventry University | CU · Faculty of Engineering Environment and Computing

Assessing the relative importance of climate change and human activities is important in developing sustainable management policies for regional land use. In this study, multiple remote sensing datasets, i.e. CHIRPS (Climate Hazard Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station Data) precipitation, MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST), Enhanced Vegetati...

Dear Colleagues, Water is a basic necessity of life, but legacy and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in the water environment can deteriorate water quality and lead to ecological and human health risks. Thousands of chemicals are produced, which usually accumulate in the environment in modern human society. Not all of these chemicals are sa...

Research into past environments and climates of South Africa has significantly grown in recent decades, owing to its rich archeological heritage and high biodiversity. The paleoscience community has worked toward an improved understanding of long-term climate and environmental dynamics, yet the application and dissemination of such information into...

Fire is a natural phenomenon along South Africa's southern Cape coast, but identifying its climatic drivers has been a subject of considerable debate. This study investigates the hydroclimatic and fire dynamics from a 9.6 m sediment core from Vankervelsvlei covering the past 7.2 ka. The fen is located near the southern Cape coast within the year-ro...

A presentation customized for students at Coventry University's School of Energy, Construction, and Environment delved into subjects spanning basic to advanced concepts in environmental pollution (including legacy and emerging contaminants), food webs, and their effects on aquatic ecosystems.

Fire is a natural phenomenon along South Africa’s southern Cape coast during the Holocene, but identifying its climatic drivers has been subject of considerable debate. In this study we investigate hydroclimatic and fire dynamics on a 9.6 m long sediment core from Vankervelsvlei covering the past 7.2 ka. The fen is located near the southern Cape co...

Introduction Estuaries are highly vulnerable systems and increasingly exposed to a number of environmental, climatic and human-induced stressors. The Knysna estuary and lagoon complex, on the south coast of South Africa, is regarded as environmentally and economically important, yet faces regional impacts resulting from ongoing urbanisation and lan...

Habitats of species and physicochemical factors are of great importance in determining the trophic transfer of contaminants in freshwater ecosystems. There is little information on how multiple physicochemical factors and habitats influence the trophic transfer of antibiotics in freshwater food webs. This study investigated the concentrations of 7...

Climate change is a significant concern impacting food security, agricultural reform, disease transmission, and disruption to human, plant, and animal ecosystems, along with a host of additional consequences, ultimately affecting the quality of life and the livelihoods of the global population. African-based research aims to better understand the i...

Results from Table S13 revealed that between years 20110-2020, United States of America, United Kingdom, and Germany engaged mostly in collaborations with South Africa within the African continent, with South Africa accounting for 21.95%, 36.36% and 13.79% of the collaborations respectively. China, on the other hand did not engage in collaborations...

We have computed the publication numbers outside Africa and depicted their frequencies in Table S12 on the next page. From this Table S12, the publication numbers were mainly from the United States of America (20.27%), the United Kingdom (19.189%) and Germany(12.162%). This has been included in the revised version of our manuscript. A new section h...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call on all nations to accomplish 17 broad global development goals by 2030. However, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a challenging period in human history, causing large-scale impacts on society and the environment as governments shift priorities and divert funding in response to this pandemic. Through a lit...

Phthalate plasticizers are a commonly utilized compound, comprising up to 85% of the total plasticizers in the market. Phthalate plasticizers have been regarded as hazardous compounds due to numerous reports based on their toxicological effects, including bioaccumulation potential, endocrine disruption, carcinogenicity, and developmental defects. T...

Richards Bay Harbour (RBH) is situated in the industrialized area on the northeast coast of South Africa. To decipher recent human activities and accompanying environmental degradation, surface sediment was collected across RBH and analysed for granulometric and elemental composition, microfaunal assemblages, and microplastics. Microplastics occur...

Homo sapiens exhibit extreme behavioural plasticity, mediated by culture and technology, that permits us to adapt rapidly to new environments and situations. Understanding the role that past climate change played in selecting for Homo sapiens’ adaptability is a key question in human evolution research. The arid and semi-arid Kalahari Basin in south...

We present a diatom record from a well‐dated 15.25 m composite sedimentary core from Verlorenvlei, a shallow coastal lake on the west coast of South Africa. We show that fluctuations in the diatom record occur in response to changes in sea level, ocean–atmosphere interactions and latitudinal shifts in the wind belts. During the early to mid‐Holocen...

A multi-proxy approach conducted on a sediment core from a small lake in the Cape Flats (Princessvlei, South Africa), supported by five AMS dates, reveals the paleoenvironments over the last 3900 years. Despite some gaps in the records, phytoliths, diatoms, δ¹⁸Odiatom, pollen, coprophilous fungus spores, microscopic charred particles (micro-charcoa...

Swartvlei is one of the most thoroughly investigated lacustrine coastal systems in South Africa. However, studies regarding the most recent past (i.e., the last 30–40 years) examining anthropogenic impacts on sediment deposition are missing completely. This study, covering the past 400 years, provides evidence for distinct environmental changes dur...

An array of sediment surface samples collected from the coastal lake Eilandvlei and its bar-built estuary, on the southern Cape coast, South Africa were analysed for their micro- and meio-organism diversity to understand the complexity in their distribution in relation to their habitat and in response to physicochemical parameters. The variation in...

Due to the scarcity of natural archives for paleoenvironmental studies, the climatic evolution of South Africa during the late Quaternary is highly debated. Peat deposits provide excellent archives to investigate past environmental and climate variability. Vankervelsvlei, a fen at the southern Cape coast, in the year round rainfall zone of South Af...

The southern Cape is a particularly dynamic region of South Africa in terms of climate change as it is influenced by both temperate and tropical circulation systems. This paper presents pollen and microcharcoal data generated from a sediment core extracted from the coastal lake Eilandvlei spanning the last $8900 years. With an average sample resolu...

A multiproxy approach, focusing on biological proxies, was undertaken to determine the influence of sea-level changes along the southern Cape coast and the variability of water masses over the central Agulhas Bank region during the Holocene. A 30.47 m sedimentary core extracted from the coastal lake, Eilandvlei, shows continuous deposition for the...

Lake sediments as well as peat deposits provide excellent archives to investigate past environmental and climate variability. Vankervelsvlei, a fen at the southern cape coast, in the year-round rainfall zone (YRZ) of South Africa, located 152 m above mean sea level is one of the scarce environmental archives in this region. From this fen a 15 m lon...

The diverse lagoons and coastal lakes along the east coast of South Africa occupy incised valleys that were flooded during the rise and subsequent stabilisation of relative sea-level during the Holocene. Sedimentary deposits contained within these waterbodies provide an opportunity to investigate complex hydrological and sedimentological processes,...

A 30.5 m sediment core was recovered from the coastal lake Eilandvlei (EV13), which represents a unique high-resolution record of environmental change for southern Africa. For the establishment of a robust chronology, special emphasis was placed on the calibration of radiocarbon (¹⁴C) ages obtained from the dating of different material. However, th...

In order to calibrate radiocarbon ages based on samples with a marine carbon component it is important to know the marine carbon reservoir correction or DR value. This study measured the DR on both known-age pre bomb marine shells and paired marine and terrestrial samples from two regions on the west coast of South Africa: the southwestern Cape and...

The ‘Cape Flats’ region, situated in the winter rainfall zone of South Africa, is a low-lying tombolo underlain by recent fluvial and aeolian sands and characterised by numerous small lakes and wetlands. One of these is Princessvlei, a eutrophic, freshwater coastal lake. The lake lies in an inter-dunal depression encroached on in the more recent pa...

Variations in the sediment input to the Namaqualand mudbelt during the Holocene are assessed using an integrative terrestrial to marine, source to sink approach. Geochemical and Sr and Nd isotopic signatures are used to distinguish fluvial sediment source areas. Relative to the sediments of the Olifants River, craton outcrops in the northern Orange...

Variations in the sediment input to the Namaqualand mudbelt during the Holocene are assessed using an integrative terrestrial to marine, source to sink approach. Geochemical and Sr and Nd isotopic signatures are used to distinguish fluvial sediment source areas. Relative to the sediments of the Olifants River, craton outcrops in the northern Orange...

Despite the southern Cape's great climatic and botanical significance (occupying the transition between the temperate and subtropical circulation systems and forming part of a global biodiversity hotspot), palaeoenvironmental data for this region of southern Africa is limited. This study presents pollen, charcoal and sedimentological data preserved...

The southern Cape coast, South Africa, is sensitive to climate fluctuations as it is influenced by different atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems. Palaeoecological evidence of Holocene climate variations in this region is presently limited. Here, we present a lake sediment record spanning approximately the last 670 years from Eilandvlei, a b...

This paper provides an overview of social science research in the marine environment of South Africa for the period 1994–2012. A bibliography based on a review of relevant literature and social science projects funded under the SEAChange programme of the South African Network for Coastal and Oceanic Research (SANCOR) was used to identify nine main...

The environment of the southern Cape coast, South Africa, is sensitive to climate fluctuations as it is influenced by different atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems. Paleoecological evidence of Holocene climate variations in this region is presently limited, due to climatic conditions not supporting the accumulation and preservation of suita...