Landscapes and Landforms of Botswana

ISBN-13: 9783030861049 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023

Opis

This volume contains 22 chapters introducing a wide range of semi-arid and geologic landscapes. Botswana, a thinly populated nation, the size of France, is a Southern African keystone country at the heart of the Kalahari, sharing some of the major sub-continental drainage basins such as the Limpopo, Zambezi, Orange, and Okavango with its neighbouring countries. The extensive Kalahari Sand surface has been sculptured by numerous past processes which have produced subtle but regional landforms consisting of extensive dunes and shorelines. Incipient rifting has created the dynamic Okavango and Makgadikgadi fan-basin systems which produces iconic wetlands with a world heritage status. Geological outcrops in particular to the east expose highly denuded basement lithologies which produces numerous inselbergs that are home to a rich archaeological heritage. The book also examines the geomorphology of mineral and water resources which sustain the economy and population and also features dedicated chapters that cover diamondiferous kimberlites, caves, pans, dams, duricrusts and wildlife.Chapter 6 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Spis treści

Foreword - Otlogetswe Totolo

Dedication to Marty McFarlane

Preface by Series Editor – Piotr Migoń

Preface by Editor – Frank Eckardt

Author Biographies

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Introduction to the Landscape and Landforms of Botswana

Julius Atlhopheng and Read B. M. Mapeo 

Chapter 2 - The Angolan catchments of northern Botswana’s major rivers: the Cubango, Cuito, Cuando and Zambezi rivers

John Mendelsohn

Chapter 3 - The Okavango Delta Peatlands

William Ellery and Karen Ellery

Chapter 4 - Landscape evolution of the Lake Ngami and Mababe Depressions within the Okavango Rift Zone, north-central Botswana

Susan Ringrose

Chapter 5 - The Makgadikgadi Basin

Sallie L. Burrough

Chapter 6 - Landscapes and landforms of the Chobe Enclave, Northern Botswana

Thuto Mokatse, Nathalie Diaz, Elisha Shemang, John Van Thuyne, Pascal Vittoz, 

Torsten Vennemann and Eric P. Verrecchia

Chapter 7 - The Chobe-Zambezi channel-floodplain system: anatomy of a wetland in a dryland

S. Tooth, M. Vandewalle, Douglas Goodin, Kathleen A. Alexander

Chapter 8 - Dunes of the southern Kalahari

David S.G. Thomas and Giles F.S. Wiggs

Chapter 9 - Dunes of the northern Kalahari

David S.G. Thomas

Chapter 10 - Kalahari Pans: Quaternary Evolution and Processes of Ephemeral Lakes 

Irka Schüller, Lukas Belz, Heinz Wilkes and Achim Wehrmann

Chapter 11 - Dry valleys (mekgacha)

David J. Nash

Chapter 12 - Landscape evolution of the Stampriet Transboundary Basin and relation to the groundwater system

Abi Stone

Chapter 13 - Calcretes, silcretes and intergrade duricrusts

David J. Nash

Chapter 14 - Geodiversity of Caves and Rockshelters in Botswana

Mark Stephens, Mike de Wit and Maipelo S. Isaacs

Chapter 15 - Kimberlites, kimberlite exploration, and the geomorphic evolution of Botswana 

Andy Moore and Mike Roberts

Chapter 16 – Geomorphology and landscapes of the Limpopo River system

Jasper Knight

Chapter 17 - Dams in Botswana: Drying times ahead

Jeremy S. Perkins and Bhagabat P. Parida

Chapter 18 - Gorges of eastern Botswana

Mark Stephens

Chapter 19 - Soil Development in the Eastern Hardveld

Peter N. Eze

Chapter 20 – The Tsodilo Hills: a multifaceted World Heritage Site

Marek Wendorff

Chapter 21 – Geoconservation in Botswana

Maipelo S. Isaacs and Mark Stephens

Chapter 22 – Zoogeomorphology of Botswana

Jeremy S. Perkins

Obituary Marty McFarlane

O autorze

Frank Eckardt is a geomorphologist who has been working at the University of Cape Town (UCT) since 2005. Originally from Germany, raised in various European countries and educated in the UK, Eckardt obtained a BSc in Geography at Kings College London, an MSc in applied remote sensing from Silsoe (Cranfield) and a DPhil from the School of Geography in Oxford.

After working as an undergraduate on glacial forelands in Norway and coastal marine habitats in Belize during his masters, he shifted to southern African drylands while conducting his PhD fieldwork in Namibia. Prior to coming to UCT, Frank Eckardt was teaching physical geography and remote sensing at the University of Botswana and acted as a remote sensing consulted on variety of projects. He currently teaches global physical geography to first years and focuses on earth observation as well as contemporary polar, tropical and arid land surface dynamics in the second year. In their final year, students are exposed to Southern Africa's Geomorphology, which among other things includes topics such as landscape evolution, weathering, soils, duricrusts, as well as contemporary mineral dust production. Frank Eckardt is currently president of the International Society for Aeolian Research (ISAR) and Head of Department at the Environmental and Geographical Sciences at UCT.