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Welcome!

Hi there! My name is Briony and I’m a 3rd Year Environmental Geoscience student at UCL- welcome to my blog centring around the theme of water and environmental change in Africa. I plan to utilise this blog to discuss how environmental change, on a local and continental scale, is influencing the hydrological cycle of Africa and, subsequently, its population. I aim to make posts discussing the science involved in the climate system, historical and contemporary issues that environmental change has brought across the continent and specific case studies.

The Earth’s climate is by nature a dynamic and ever-altering system. Communities around the world have successfully been adapting to environmental change for generations, however, the timescale on which the current climate crisis is occurring no longer makes adaption as easy. The reason why discussing these changes is so vital, and why I’ve chosen environmental change as the theme for this blog, is that it impacts every aspect of human life.

The list of ways that environmental change, and specifically it’s impacts on water, affect society is endless: population, land use, public health, and social inequality are just a few factors involved. Africa is set to undergo drastic environmental change as an impact of the climate crisis, which not only makes it interesting to examine from a scientific perspective but as a home to over a billion people, makes it vital to understand and begin to mitigate the societal impacts.

My next post will feature a summary of some of the key concepts I’m going to be throwing around on this blog so keep your eyes peeled and I’ll see you next time!

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Popular posts from this blog

Shrinking Water Sources: Lake Chad.

Lake Chad is a classic example of the impacts of environmental change on the hydrological system in Africa and therefore an excellent place for us to begin our exploration of this topic. Lake Chad is located in the centre of the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa, spanning areas in Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon.   In the 1960’s it was ranked as the world’s 6 th largest inland water body , covering an area of 25,000 km 2 . By 2004, its area was just 532 km 2 , a reduction of approximately 90%. The scale of the change can be visualised in Figure 1 . The lake has huge economic importance for the area, namely for the fishing industry but also for agriculture and pastoralism. Therefore measuring the changes to the lake and identifying the parameters that influence them is vital to adaptation. Figure 1 - A map of Lake Chad and its surrounding area, showing the character of the lake in 1960 and 2002. The rainfall patterns over the Lake Chad basin have a latitudinal gradient,

Desertification- When The Dry Gets Drier.

In one of my previous posts, I broadly described how climate change will impact Africa’s hydrological cycle by making wet areas wetter and dry areas drier. There are a considerable number of negatives to extreme aridity: drought, degradation of vegetation and overstretching of resources to name three. All three of these impacts can contribute to desertification. Desertification is a specific type of degradation that occurs in dryland areas, extending arid areas beyond their existing boundaries and changing the environment of the landscape. It includes declines in the quality of soil, vegetation, and water resources, all of which can be either temporary or permanent. These declines are drastic for human populations, globally 2.7 billion of whom live in dryland areas . There is a complex relationship between climate change, drought, and desertification , linked by a number of feedback loops and this complexity has often hindered the comprehensive monitoring of desertification proces

Climate Change and the Hydrological Cycle: A Pit-stop Tour.

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