While African mountain terrain above 2000 m represents only 1% of the continent, it is highly diverse, extending across the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and spanning a wide range of climate zones, from tropical rainforests to arid deserts. These mountain environmental refuges signify some of the continent’s most dynamic geoecological and socio-ecological systems, encompassing important water towers, complex geomorphologies, and local communities that depend on high-altitude ecosystem services.
The long- and short-term geo-ecological evolution of African mountain areas has received limited scientific attention, including from the European geoscience community. Past and present landscape evolution and climatic change, including cryosphere development, soil processes, vegetation shifts, and slope geomorphological dynamics, have reshaped Africa’s high mountains. These changes in high-elevation environments have influenced the socio-ecological services and resources available to populations now facing increasing climate change related risks under ongoing global warming.
In this session, we invite contributions on these and related topics in African mountains, particularly those addressing past and recent landscape evolution, including millennial-, centennial-, and decadal-scale changes. We also welcome datasets from experimental areas, chronological databases, climate and environmental modeling, community-based approaches, remote sensing (satellite, InSAR, UAV) studies, and other multidisciplinary approaches that integrate the topics outlined above.