The Maloti-Drakensberg of Lesotho and South Africa is Africa’s highest and most expansive mountain system south of Kilimanjaro (Tanzania). Its name is hyphenated because the mountain ranges it incorporates span political and modern... more
The Maloti-Drakensberg of Lesotho and South Africa is Africa’s highest and most expansive mountain system south of Kilimanjaro (Tanzania). Its name is hyphenated because the mountain ranges it incorporates span political and modern language and cultural regions and, accordingly, the mountains are seen from different perspectives. Maloti in the Sesotho language means ‘mountains’; the Africaner trekboere saw them as dragon’s (‘drakens’) mountains, today often coupled with the isiZulu term uKhahlamba, or ‘barrier of spears’. The region labelled Drakensberg’ on the KwaZulu-Natal (South African) side of the range simply refers to the escarpment (Mazel, this volume), whereas the highest peaks are inside the Kingdom of Lesotho. Although the mountains themselves were formed during uplift of the central plateau some 20 million years ago, it was the late Quaternary that saw the peopling of the area, with recurrent occupations from at least 83,000 years ago in the Lesotho Highlands (Pazan et al., 2022, this volume). This Special Issue highlights selected topics pertaining to the varied Late Quaternary peoples and environments of the mountains across time and space.
We investigated carbon storage in high elevation ecosystems of the Olympic Mountains. A sharp precipitation gradient created by the Olympic mountain range allows for comparison of carbon storage in different climatic regimes and... more
We investigated carbon storage in high elevation ecosystems of the Olympic Mountains. A sharp precipitation gradient created by the Olympic mountain range allows for comparison of carbon storage in different climatic regimes and vegetation types. Carbon in soils, vegetation, and woody debris was examined in subalpine forests and meadows of the northeast (dry) and southwest (wet) Olympics. Soil carbon storage
