Lynne Julia Quick

Lynne Julia Quick
Nelson Mandela University | NMMU · African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience

PhD Palaeoenvironmental Sc

About

69
Publications
18,580
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983
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Introduction
I am a palaeoecologist specifically a palynologist working on reconstructing South African palaeoenvironments. I am a Senior Research Fellow within the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University, and head up the state-of-the-art Palaeoecology Laboratory.

Publications

Publications (69)
Article
Full-text available
Ambrosia pollen was detected in 5 aerobiological monitoring stations over the sampling period (Durban, Kimberley, Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Johannesburg). Periods of 4 consistent pollination years were observed in Kimberley (min: 1; max: 16 p.g/m3) and Durban (min: 26; max: 66 p.g/m3). In Pretoria, ragweed pollen was detected for 2 years (2020–2021;...
Article
Full-text available
Fire plays a pivotal role in driving ecological shifts between Mediterranean‐type vegetation and subtropical ecosystems in South Africa. This study investigates long‐term environmental dynamics and ecological regime changes at the Mediterranean‐type vegetation /subtropical boundary using a 6000‐year palaeoecological sequence from the Baviaanskloof...
Preprint
Fire plays a pivotal role in driving ecological shifts between Mediterranean-type vegetation and subtropical ecosystems in South Africa. This study investigates long-term environmental dynamics and ecological regime changes at the Mediterranean-type vegetation /subtropical boundary using a 6000-year palaeoecological sequence from the Baviaanskloof...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The South African Pollen Monitoring Network (SAPNET) was set up in 2019 to conduct the first long‐term national aerospora monitoring organised at a national level. , SAPNET has monitored airborne pollen and fungal spores in seven of the major cities across South Africa, covering multiple biomes with a diversity of climates, topographies, and vegeta...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Pollen monitoring has been discontinuously undertaken in South Africa, a country with high biodiversity, a seasonal rainfall gradient, and nine biomes from arid to subtropical. The South African Pollen Monitoring Network was set up in 2019 to conduct the first long-term national aerospora monitoring across multiple biomes, providing wee...
Article
Mediterranean environments are biodiversity hotspots in which strongly seasonal winter rainfall regimes and fire play major roles in driving ecosystem dynamics. Global predictions forecast unreliability of winter rainfall and increases in summer rainfall that are expected to result in major changes in community structure. Mediterranean systems are...
Article
Globally, fire is a primary agent for modifying environments through the long-term coupling of human and natural systems. In southern Africa, control of fire by humans has been documented since the late Middle Pleistocene, though it is unclear when or if anthropogenic burning led to fundamental shifts in the region's fire regimes. To identify poten...
Article
Full-text available
The Late Quaternary climate history of South Africa and, in particular, potential changes in atmospheric circulation have been subject to considerable debate. To some extent, this is due to a scarcity of natural archives, and on the other hand the available indirect hydrological proxies are not suited to distinguishing between precipitation origina...
Presentation
South Africa is a key region to reconstruct past changes in atmospheric circulation patterns; i.e. interactions between the temperate westerlies and tropical easterlies. However, due to an overall scarcity of natural archives and the analyses of rather indirect hydrological proxies, South Africa’s climatic evolution during the Holocene remains high...
Article
Full-text available
Interpretations of fossil pollen data are often limited to broad, qualitative assessments of past climatic and environmental conditions (e.g. colder vs. warmer, wetter vs. drier, open vs. closed landscape). These assessments can be particularly imprecise in regions such as southern Africa, where botanical biodiversity is high, and there exists an a...
Data
Interpretations of fossil pollen data are often limited to broad, qualitative assessments of past climatic and environmental conditions (e.g. colder vs. warmer, wetter vs. drier, open vs. closed landscape). These assessments can be particularly imprecise in regions such as southern Africa, where botanical biodiversity is high, and there exists an a...
Presentation
South Africa is a key region to reconstruct past changes in atmospheric circulation patterns; i.e. interactions between the temperate westerlies and tropical easterlies. However, due to an overall scarcity of natural archives and the analyses of rather indirect hydrological proxies, South Africa's climatic evolution during the Holocene remains deba...
Article
Full-text available
The southwestern Cape of South Africa is a particularly dynamic region in terms of long-term climate change. We analysed fossil pollen from a 25,000 year sediment core taken from a near-coastal wetland at Pearly Beach that revealed that distinct changes in vegetation composition occurred along the southwestern Cape coast. From these changes, consid...
Article
Despite advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Recent inquiries suggest that human evolution reflects a long history of interconnections between the behavior of humans and their surroundin...
Article
Full-text available
Across the glacial-interglacial cycles of the late Pleistocene (~700 k.y.), temperature variability at low latitudes is often considered to have been negligible compared to changes in precipitation. However, a paucity of quantified temperature records makes this difficult to reliably assess. In this study, we used the Bayesian method CREST (Climate...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents continuous, high resolution fossil pollen and microcharcoal records from Bo Langvlei, a lake in the Wilderness Embayment on South Africa’s southern Cape coast. Spanning the past ~1300 years and encompassing the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA; c. AD 950–1250) and the Little Ice Age (LIA; c. AD 1300–1850), these records provide a r...
Article
Full-text available
A comprehensive understanding of the relationship between land cover, climate change and disturbance dynamics is needed to inform scenarios of vegetation change on the African continent. Although significant advances have been made, large uncertainties exist in projections of future biodiversity and ecosystem change for the world's largest tropical...
Article
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...
Article
South Africa's southern Cape is a highly dynamic climatic region that is influenced by changes in both temperate and tropical atmospheric and oceanic circulation dynamics. Recent research initiatives suggest that the major elements of the regional climate system have acted both independently and in combination to establish a mosaic of distinct clim...
Article
The Cape Floristic Region (CFR) is one of the world's major biodiversity hotspots, and much work has gone into identifying the drivers of this diversity. Considered regionally in the context of Quaternary climate change, climate stability is generally accepted as being one of the major factors promoting the abundance of species now present in the C...
Article
Due to the scarcity of natural archives for palaeoenvironmental studies, the climatic evolution of South Africa during the late Quaternary remains the subject of considerable debate. Peat deposits provide excellent archives to investigate past environmental and climate variability. Vankervelsvlei, a fen near the southern Cape coast, located 152 m a...
Article
Full-text available
This paper analyses a series of high-quality continuous records from southeastern Africa to study the spatiotemporal pat-terning of Holocene hydroclimatic anomalies in the region. Results indicate dominant frequencies of variability at millen-nial time scales, and a series of anomalies broadly common to all records. Of particular interest, data fro...
Poster
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Poster
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...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter provides a perspective on vegetation changes (as a proxy for overall terrestrial ecosystem changes) within southern Africa's summer and winter rainfall zones. While climate is a major determinant on southern African ecosystems, topography, geology and fire also play critical roles in ecosystem pattern and processes. Late Quaternary cli...
Article
Full-text available
The southern Cape is a key focus for southern African palaeoenvironmental research as it represents the transitional region between temperate westerlies and sub-tropical rainfall sources. This study presents pollen, plant biomarker, geochemical and charcoal data preserved in the Rietvlei wetland. The bulk of the record spans the last 16 ka, but it...
Article
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...
Chapter
Full-text available
The Cederberg forms part of the western branch of the Cape Fold Belt (CFB), a mountain range that resulted from orogenic (mountain-building) processes in the Permo–Triassic (~300–230 Ma ago). After deposition, the Ordovician to Carboniferous sandstones and shales of the Cape Supergroup were subjected to faulting , folding and subsequent weathering...
Article
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...
Article
The Cederberg Mountains (Western Cape Province, South Africa) are located within the Fynbos Biome, which exhibits some of the highest levels of species richness and endemism in the world. The region’s post-glacial vegetation history, however, remains largely unknown. Presented here is a high resolution pollen and microcharcoal records spanning the...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
In arid and semi-arid areas such as southern Africa, rock hyrax (Procavia capensis) middens represent an exceptionally valuable source of late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental information. Pollen and stable isotope data derived from two rock hyrax middens extracted from De Rif in the Cederberg Mountains of the southwestern Cape, casts new light on cl...
Article
Our ability to identify the timing and extent of past major climate fluctuations is central to understanding changes in the global climate system. Of the events that have occurred in recent geological time, the Younger Dryas (YD, 13-11.5 ka), an abrupt return to near-glacial conditions during the last glacial-interglacial transition (ca. 18-11.5 ka...

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