CHI16

Lake Chilwa - The Human-Water-System

01/01/2016 to 31/12/2016

The Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment Center in Tübingen and Frankfurt (HEP) in conjunction with New York University (USA) and the department of Geography and Earth Sciences of the University of Malawi’s Chancellor College is carrying out a research project titled “Lake Chilwa - The Human-Water System” aimed at evaluating the relationships between human activities around water bodies including the metabolic flux of materials in the medium to long term meteorological context. The project has a pilot phase whose results could lead into a long- term project depending on the outcomes. One outcome of the project will be a time-resolved metabolic ecology of the Lake Chilwa basin. The pilot phase of the project requires the collection of data from various proxies for past environmental reconstructions such as lake sediments from the bed of Lake Chilwa; the geology (rocks) of Lake Chilwa’s catchment, water and soil samples, plants and bones of animal specimens; all to be used for radiometric dating and isotopic studies.