TCD Scientist Leads Fieldwork on the Impacts of Environmental Change on Rwandan Volcanos

Posted on: 19 August 2010

A team of three scientists led by TCD’s Professor of Geography, David Taylor of the School of Natural Sciences have recently completed fieldwork in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda to determine the extent to which climate variability and other ecological pressures have affected biodiversity on the volcanic Albertine Rift of central Africa.  The fieldwork forms part of a larger research project involving the sampling of crater sites at the summits of neighbouring volcanoes in the region and aims to contribute to the understanding of how environments function and how future environmental changes are likely to affect the ecosystems.

Mountain regions are among the Earth’s most sensitive to climate change.  Sediments that accumulate in lakes and swamps around the craters of volcanoes contain valuable information on how past ecosystems responded to environmental change.  Once analysed, these sedimentary archives can unveil details of prior environmental disturbances, such as fire and landslides, which can potentially be used to overcome shortages of data from long-term monitoring studies and can be used as a basis for validating output from computer-based simulations of environmental change impacts.

Crater lake at Bisoke volcano.

TCD researchers, Professor David Taylor and Gayle McGlynn, were joined on the field trip by Dr Catherine Dalton of the University of Limerick.  The team, who are working in collaboration with the Karisoke Research Centre, Rwanda Office of Tourism and National Parks and the National University of Rwanda, successfully collected cores of sediment believed to cover the last 1000 years from a crater lake at the summit of Bisoke volcano.  Analyses of these will focus on establishing variations in particles such as pollen, charcoal, algae and volcanic fragments with the results used to determine both the nature and timing of past changes in vegetation composition and distribution and in aquatic ecosystem and catchment conditions.

Speaking about the field trip Professor David Taylor said: “The crater lake of Bisoke is situated 3700m above sea level which provided a challenge for our team.  With the support of a team of porters, who helped ferry equipment to and from the crater lake, and the Rwanda Development Board, who granted research permission, our team was given the opportunity to be the first group in over 30 years to camp and conduct research at the summit of Bisoke.  An analysis of the samples that we gathered during our visit will assist both scientists and policymakers’ deal with the issues relating to climate change.”