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Lisa Frost Ramsay M.Sc. M.Phil
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Cambridge Quaternary Phone +44 1223 339751 E-mail lfr26@cam.ac.uk |
Current Project
Lisa began her PhD in October 2006, building on her MPhil project conducted during the 2005/2006 academic year in which she established a preliminary pollen reference collection for the KwaZulu-Natal region. Her project is entitled 'A palynological study of late Quaternary wetland sediments of the Maputaland Coastal Plain, South Africa' and she is supervised by Professor Phil Gibbard and Dr Harriet Allen.
The Mkuze Wetland System, situated on the Maputaland Coastal Plain in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, forms a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention. The system comprises a range of wetland types from seasonal to permanent swamps associated with the Mkuze River and the Mbazwane Stream, which converge and drain into Lake St Lucia. The study will involve sedimentological and palynological analyses of sediment cores collected within the Mkuze system. The results will be used to reconstruct palaeoenvironments according to sediment structure and present species ranges. A chronology will be developed according to carefully selected radiocarbon dating points and through stratigraphic correlation with other southern African studies where possible.
Despite its known ecological importance and potential, very little is known of the environmental history of the region. It is hoped that this study will provide a baseline dataset and a palaeoenvironmental context for environmental decision-making and management of this region.
Publications
Diab, R.D., Thompson, A.M., Mari, K., Ramsay, L. and Coetzee, G.J.R. (2004): Tropospheric ozone climatology over Irene, South Africa from 1990-1994 and 1998-2001. Journal of Geophysical Research, 109, D20301.
Ramsay, L.F. 2006 A palaeoenvironmental study of the Mkuze Wetland, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. University of Cambridge. M.Phil Dissertation.