Climatic and anthropogenic drivers of landscape change in equatorial East Africa during the last two millennia

The long history of human influence on the natural landscape of East Africa is often obscured by climate variability and naturally occurring disturbances. Yet understanding the role of humans in past landscape changes is vital for understanding the response of modern-day landscapes to anthropogenic and natural environmental pressures, and essential in a region where human well-being is so dependent on the carrying capacity of the landscape. Disentangling these human-climate-landscape interactions is therefore of huge importance and a prime role in this effort can be played by paleoecological reconstructions of past climate and landscape changes. By identifying the patterns of climate change and its effects on the landscape, the overlaying influence that humans have had on the landscape can be revealed. East African lakes have registered this long-term history within their sedimentary archive, and from them records of environmental change and vegetation dynamics can be reconstructed with the goal of answering these questions