Evaluating the use of dune sediments as a proxy for palaeo-aridity: A southern African case study

The dominance of dryland environments in the Southern Hemisphere makes the study of these regions of critical importance for the development of regional, hemispheric and global models of environmental change. Unfortunately, the wetting and drying cycles associated with semi-hyperarid climates are not conducive to the preservation of traditional organic proxy data sources. The last decade, however, has seen the development of a number of alternative archives including the application of luminescence dating techniques to dunes and other aeolian deposits. In continental situations, the existence of relict dune fields has long been thought to be evidence of drier conditions during the Pleistocene, and direct ages from these features have been interpreted almost exclusively as indicating phases of aridity. However, an increasing number of ages from a broader range of environments are calling into question the assumption that aeolian activity can be simply equated with aridity. Presented here is a comparison of dune ages that have been obtained from across southern Africa with a range of proxies from both terrestrial and marine records. Taken as a whole, three primary phases of activity can be identified at ~ 60–40, 35–20 and 17–4 ka. The frequent discordance with other terrestrial records indicating coeval increases in humidity and the close correlation of these phases with wind strength proxies suggest that aridity is unlikely to be the sole, or even primary, forcing mechanism for aeolian activity in the region, and the palaeoclimatic significance of these sedimentary archives needs to be reassessed.