Late glacial (17,060-13,400 cal yr BP) sedimentary and paleoenvironmental evolution of the Sekhokong Range (Drakensberg), southern Africa

Investigating the Mineral Composition of Peat by Combining FTIR-ATR and Multivariate Analysis

The mineral content of peat has received little attention until the last few decades, when peat cores have been increasingly used to study past dust deposition. Paleodust deposition is commonly reconstructed through elemental datasets, which are used to infer deposition rates, storminess patterns, mineral composition, source identification, and fertilization effects. To date, only a few studies have directly analyzed the mineralogy (by XRD and SEM) and particle size of peat mineral matter, and the conducted studies have usually been constrained by the need to remove a large amount of organic matter, which risks altering the mineral component. One alternative is to use quick, nondestructive techniques, such as FTIR-ATR, that require little sample preparation. In this study, we analyzed by FTIR-ATR both the bulk peat and ash fractions of a sequence taken in a minerogenic mire that covered a wide inorganic matter content range (6%–57%). Aided by principal component analysis on transposed IR spectral data, we were able to identify the main minerals in bulk peat and ash, quartz, mica (likely muscovite), K feldspar (likely microcline), and plagioclase (likely anorthite), which are consistent with the local geology of the mire catchment. Changes in mineral composition during the last ca. 2800 years were coeval with previously reconstructed environmental changes using the same core. Our results suggest that FTIR-ATR has great potential to investigate peat mineral matter and the processes that drive its compositional change.

Mountain Watch: How LT(S)ER Is Safeguarding Southern Africa’s People and Biodiversity for a Sustainable Mountain Future

Southern Africa is an exceptionally diverse region with an ancient geologic and climatic history. Its mountains are located in the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes at a tropical–temperate interface, offering a rare opportunity to contextualise and frame our research from an austral perspective to balance the global narrative around sustainable mountain futures for people and biodiversity. Limited Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) was initiated more than a century ago in South Africa to optimise catchment management through sound water policy. The South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) has resurrected many government LTER programmes and added observatories representative of the country’s heterogeneous zonobiomes, including its mountain regions. LTER in other Southern African mountains is largely absent. The current rollout of the Expanded Freshwater and Terrestrial Environmental Observation Network (EFTEON) and the Southern African chapters of international programmes such as the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA), RangeX, and the Global Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (Soil BON), as well as the expansion of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN), is ushering in a renaissance period of global change research in the region, which takes greater cognisance of its social context. This diversity of initiatives will generate a more robust knowledge base from which to draw conclusions about how to better safeguard the well-being of people and biodiversity in the region and help balance livelihoods and environmental sustainability in our complex, third-world socio-ecological mountain systems.