Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Science 17 July 1987:
Vol. 237. no. 4812, pp. 298 - 300
DOI: 10.1126/science.237.4812.298
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

Wadi Howar: Paleoclimatic Evidence from an Extinct River System in the Southeastern Sahara

H. -J. PACHUR 1 and S. KRÖPELIN 1

1 Special Research Project Arid Areas, Department of Physical Geography, Geomorphological Laboratory, Free University, D-1000 Berlin (West) 41, Germany.

Field research into the climatic history and shifting of the East Saharan desert has furnished evidence that during Quaternary time the present extremely arid western part of Upper Nubia (northern Sudan)was temporarily linked to the Nile by way of a hitherto unknown 400 kilometer long tributary. From about 9500 to 4500 years ago, lower Wadi Howar flowed through an environment characterized by numerous ground water outlets and freshwater lakes. Savanna fauna and cattle-herders occupied this region, which today receives at most 25 millimeters of rainfall per year. At that period the southern edge of the eastern Sahara was some 500 kilometers further north than today and ground water resources were recharged for the last time.

Submitted on January 22, 1987
Accepted on May 21, 1987


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Climate-Controlled Holocene Occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africa's Evolution.
R. Kuper and S. Kropelin (2006)
Science 313, 803-807
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Intra-interglacial cold events: an Eemian-Holocene comparison.
M. Maslin, M. Sarnthein, J.-J. Knaack, P. Grootes, and C. Tzedakis (1998)
Geological Society, London, Special Publications 131, 91-99
   Abstract »    PDF »
Stable carbon and oxygen isotopic composition of early-Holocene gastropods from Wadi Mansurab, north-central Sudan.
D. Ayliffe, D. Ayliffe, M. A.J. Williams, and F. Sheldon (1996)
The Holocene 6, 157-169
   Abstract »    PDF »
Holocene pollen spectra from Oyo, northwestern Sudan: problems of interpretation in a hyperarid environment.
J. C. Ritchie and J.C. Ritchie (1994)
The Holocene 4, 9-15
   Abstract »    PDF »


ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

ADVERTISEMENT

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)