QuaternaryScienceReviews,Vol. 14, pp. 193-207, 1995.

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GEOMORPHIC RESPONSE TO RAPID CLIMATIC AND HYDROLOGIC

CHANGE DURING THE LATE PLEISTOCENE AND EARLY HOLOCENE IN
THE HUMID AND SUB-HUMID TROPICS

MICHAEL E THOMAS* and MARTIN B. T H O R P ' I

*Department of Environmental Science, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, U.K.
+Department of Geography, University College Dublin, Bellfield, Dublin 4, Republic of lreland

Abstract - - The data base concerning late Quaternary environmental change in the humid tropics is
dependent on records from scattered sites; the intensity and duration of wet-dry oscillations remain
speculative, and the responses of hillslopes and river systems are based on over-simplified models.
However, available evidence indicates that prolonged aridity affected all but a few favoured core
QSR
areas of equatorial climate after 20,000 BR lasting 5-7 ka. Dry conditions at the LGM were marked
by semi-arid landforms and reduced steam activity. Large palaeofloods occurred after 13,000 BR but
dry conditions returned after I 1,000 BR before the early Holocene pluvial led to abundant sedimenta-
tion lasting nearly 2 ka after 9500 BR in Africa, Amazonia and Australasia. Erosion (channel cutting)
and flood deposition occurred at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, followed by multiple shifts
from lateral to vertical accretion (fill-cut episodes) during the early Holocene, while thick overbank
deposits formed during the later Holocene. Re-establishment of the lowland rainforests was delayed
until after 9000 BP in Africa, Australia and Brazil and several wet~try oscillations followed in the
mid Holocene period. Hillslope activity at the LGM was marked by local sediment transfers and fan
formation; at the termination sediment fluxes increased rapidly, but mass movement probably peaked
after 10,000 BR Sediment delivery to stream channels was not immediate and large sediment stores
remain on the landscape today, many in areas of potential sensitivity of erosion.

INTRODUCTION ion, perhaps from about 5000 BP onwards, but mainly

Late Pleistocene and H o l o c e n e signals of climate
change are becoming more widely available for the trop-
ics, mainly from studies of pollen and lake sedimenta-
tion. However, there is a gap in our knowledge, between
the inferences about vegetation and climate derived from
pollen and diatoms, and our understanding of landscape
dynamics as a response to the predicted changes identi-
fied. That understanding needs to come, in part at least,
from the analysis, dating and interpretation of colluvial
and alluvial deposits, but there is a dearth of published
evidence concerning these data sources from within the
more humid parts of the tropics.
The additional problem of the impact of human occu-
pation on both pollen spectra and on sedimentation in
lakes (Flenley, 1988) must clearly lead to other uncertain-
ties of interpretation, and research into the impacts on
landscape dynamics of possible anthropogenic effects on
vegetation, beginning as early as 26,000 BP in Irian Jaya
(Haberle et al., 1991) and occurring more widely by
7000-5000 BE is at a primitive stage. Preliminary indi-
cations, however, suggest that, with some possible excep-
tions at high altitudes or in other marginal forest environ-
ments, early deforestation was probably short-term and
very patchy, reflecting the practices of hunters and shift-
ing cultivators operating in small bands. In this case the
impacts may have been short-lived and localised, until
widespread agriculture associated with larger populations
spread across many tropical areas in a diachronous lash-
during the last 2-3 ka.
It has also b e c o m e w i d e l y a c c e p t e d that climate
changes can be abrupt, taking perhaps 102 years rather
than 103 years to adjust from one regime to another. This
realisation also means that low resolution studies of sedi-
ments and peats can be misleading, because significant
climate change events may not have been sampled. On
the other hand, high resolution studies will converge with
concepts of flood frequency and interannual climate vari-
ability. Ideally, notions of storm size and frequency
should derive from models of climate regimes most like-
ly to produce specific event patterns. However, because
our palaeoenvironmental data and models of palaeocli-
mate do not usually afford such a detailed understanding,
many assumptions are made regarding rainfall events,
their frequency, size and intensity, at different stages of
the Late Quaternary. Peters and Tetzlaff (1990) for exam-
ple have proposed that disturbance lines associated with
convectional rainfall propagated across west Africa may
have been reduced by 50% in number and by one third in
their i n t e n s i t y d u r i n g the Last G l a c i a l M a x i m u m ,
20,000-18,000 BP (LGM), effectively reducing rainfalls
in the Sahelian zone at least by two thirds.
The interpretation of field evidence of landscape
change must also apply models of landscape response to
patterns of rainfall and vegetation change, and it is in this
area that many further difficulties arise. It is the intention
of the following discussion to challenge some of the
assumptions made in the literature on this topic, and to

193
 194 Quaternary Science Reviews: Volume 14
draw on field observations of relevant, but often undated
landforms. With respect to event-based phenomena such
as erosion scars, landslide debris, colluvial and alluvial
sedimentary units, a particular deposit or landform may
represent a single geomorphic event spanning a time
interval of 10-2-10-1 years (days-months), and this could
have taken place within climates having different rainfall
totals, seasonality and event frequency, providing that the
stability thresholds in the system are exceeded. However,
appeals for the complex response of river and slope sys-
tems to explain virtually all perturbations within the
environmental system are unconvincing, where wide-
spread and near-synchronous changes have occurred.
Many such doubts arise from uncertainty concerning
landscape responses to meteorological events, when
viewed over longer time spans of 102-103 years, during
which the vegetation cover may also have changed. It is
also necessary to consider the likelihood of non-meteoro-
logical events such as earthquakes, as triggers for slope
instability, and crustal warping and sea level change as
the engines for stream incision, particularly in coastal
regions subject to more than 100 m rise in sea level at the
end of the Pleistocene. In this study, however, the focus is
mainly on inland cratonic landscapes and the problems of
neotectonics in active crustal zones will not be addressed.
Problems are also encountered in enclosed lakes,
where slumping of lake-margin sediments may occur as
water levels drop during d r y phases of climate, when
mass movement elsewhere in the landscape may be
favoured by exceptionally wet conditions. This consider-
ation affects the interpretation of mineral sedimentary
layers in lake cores, though the occurrence of sub-aque-
ous turbidity flows could account for some phenomena of
this kind. In other instances, lake-side or lake-catchment
forest clearance and cultivation may have been responsi-
ble for influxes of sediment and changes in the pollen
spectra.
Of wider application are the doubts expressed con-
cerning the supposed relationships between climate, veg-
etation and sediment yield on the one hand, and predic-
tions about stream power, erosion and deposition on the
other. It would be easy to assert that sediment yields from
hillslopes were high during dry periods, when the vegeta-
tion cover was reduced if storm intensities remained
high. But the subject requires deeper analysis. Much of
our thinking has been based on models of landscape
response to varying rainfall and vegetation cover which
derive from the temperate continental climates (Langbein
and Schumm, 1958; Schumm, 1965, 1968; Knox, 1972,
1975, 1984). Their wider applicability has been ques-
tioned by Eybergen and Imeson (1989), who cite diver-
gent observations from the Mediterranean semi-arid
zone. A detailed discussion, again largely derived from
arid zone studies, has been offered by Bull (1991). It is
clear from these analyses that the approach to this prob-
lem needs to proceed from a closer scrutiny of climatic
patterns and weather events in space and time.
For example, rainfall erosivity in tropical climates has
been studied by Roose (1977, 1981), who developed a
climatic erosion index for West Africa based on the erosi-
tivity index (E13o)o f Wischmeier and Smith (1958). He
found that the variation across the region could be
expressed as an index, REI = 1/2 P. This implies great
variations in the erosivity of rainfall between sites close
to forest-savanna boundary. In the monsoonal climate of
Sierra Leone, rainfall at the boundary is nearly 2500 mm
year-1 (REI3o = 1250), while in southern Nigeria, where
there is a shorter dry season, the figure is closer to 1400
mm y e a r ~ (RE13o = 700). Erosivity should also rise with
annual rainfalls within the forested tropics. This model is
unlikely to apply in all tropical climates, but where the
rainfall generating mechanism is similar throughout an
area it may assist predictions concerning landscape
response to rainfall and vegetation changes.
The application of magnitude: frequency analysis to
the occurrence of formative events, leading to landslid-
ing, erosion and sedimentation, is often seen to offer the
most appropriate approach to climate in geomorphology
(Wolman and Miller, 1960; Ahnert, 1987; Eybergen and
Imeson, 1989). Increasingly, stress is laid on the relative
importance of so-called extreme events in re-shaping the
landscape; leaving durable traces as sediments, terraces
and landslide debris (Gupta, 1988). Such events may
have return periods of 102 years, but in the monsoon trop-
ics, sediments and channel patterns can be re-modelled in
almost every flood season (Gupta and Dutt, 1989). In
Equatorial regions, neither monsoon rains nor cyclonic
storms occur, but daily rainfall can be high throughout
most of the year, keeping the ground close to saturation
and leading to almost instantaneous runoff, frequent
flooding and repeated landsliding. The effectiveness of
climate changes should therefore be measured in terms of
the clustering of extreme events capable of repeated
destabilisation of hillslope and stream systems over peri-
ods of l0 2, perhaps 103 years (Starkel, 1983; Eybergen
and Imeson, 1989).
It is also common to indicate a peak of sediment pro-
duction during periods of rapidly changing climate, as
when rainfall increases ahead of vegetation recovery
(Knox, 1972, 1983; Thomas and Thorp, 1980, 1992;
Roberts and Baker, 1993). In a comparable manner rivers
are expected to aggrade their valleys when sediment
yield is high but discharge is erratic, and to erode their
beds when forested conditions promote broader flood
peaks and lower sediment concentrations. However, not
all of this reasoning is matched to field evidence and
some simple models of these kinds may be very mislead-
ing. Some of the problems can be listed.
(1) The model of long periods of 'stable' climate
punctuated by intervals of rapid change is not adequate to
account for landscape complexity, because it largely
ignores the magnitude-frequency properties of climate;
additionally, 'stable' climates may not have persisted
throughout the periods indicated on most models.
(2) The production of sediment from hillslopes may
arise from mass movements favoured by saturated soil
conditions, as well as by surface wash which is promoted
by open vegetation. But in neither case are connections to
 M.E Thomas and M.B. Thorp: Geomorphic Response to Climatic and Hydrologic Change
stream channels always direct, and sediment stores in the
landscape play a major role in controlling delivery into
rivers, a point made forcibly by Church and Slaymaker
(1989) with respect to glaciated terrain. Thus, while high-
land streams may respond to the magnitude and frequen-
cy of landslides coming directly into the channel, plains
rivers create floodplains over 104 years, and these form
the major sources of sediment entering the channel.
(3) The rainfall regime is critical to any arguments
concerning stream activity. Runoff tends to vary with
storm size and antecedent moisture and can be almost
continuous under equatorial conditions, whereas in mon-
soon climates there is a period of major annual floods,
creating a distinctive fluvial regime (Gupta and Dutt,
1989), different from the seasonality of the drier savanna
climates found in parts of Africa and South America.
(4) Late Quaternary events were superimposed on
landscapes produced during many previous cycles or
oscillations of climate. Those landscapes contain glacis,
fans, terraces and a multitude of hillslope forms, some
parts of which act as barriers to the entry of sediment into
present-day rivers.
(5) The impacts of extreme events within present-day
climate regimes may mimic those of palaeoclimates,
and it is important to identify the temporal and spatial
distributions of each.
For these and other reasons, the interpretation of many
forms and deposits must depend on site properties, their
sensitivity to change and their regional settings. The
analysis of material from vertical cores taken from
enclosed depressions does not always satisfy this require-
ment, while the interpretation of lake levels is notoriously
difficult, where basin morphology, catchment size, altitu-
dinal variation and hydrogeology can all be extremely
variable. However, the use of a large number of observa-
tions has allowed world-wide correlations to be offered
for Late Quaternary lake levels (Street-Perrott and Grove,
1979; Street-Perrott et al., 1985), and this comparative
method is important for other studies, including those of
hillslope morphology and stream sedimentation.
THE C H R O N O L O G Y OF LATE QUATERNARY
ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
Many difficulties confront the establishment of a
widely applicable chronology of I~te Quaternary environ-
mental change in the humid tropics, including differences
between areas in the onset and duration of major climate
changes. Thus the cooling associated with the last glacial
maximum appears to have become effective at least by
40,000 BP in many upland areas and before 30,000 BP in
the lowlands. However, the duration of ice-age aridity
may have been much more shortlived, appearing post-
22,000 BP in most areas and, according to some writers,
it was ameliorating by 16,500 BP (in SE India, Van
Campo, 1986). Some areas of rainforest in western equa-
torial Africa reveal little or no evidence of dry climates
and possibly remained as refugia (Maley, 1991; Preuss,
1990). But elsewhere, cooler and drier climates seem to
195
have persisted until well after 14,000 BE There is much
evidence for a period of unstable and often very wet condi-
tions beginning around 12,500 BP and lasting up to 1.5 ka,
and it is remarkable how frequently this date (of 12,500
BP) is referenced around the globe. A tentative chronology
for the Quaternary in the tropics is given in Table 1.
How dry were the conditions either side of the last
glacial maximum in different parts of the tropics? This
has been difficult to gauge from the literature, and there is
a bias in palynological studies towards the importance of
cooling in upland sites which inherently are likely to have
received more rainfall from orographic mechanisms than
adjacent lowlands. West Africa may have been remark-
ably dry and if the NE Trades held the ITCZ to a northern
limit of not much beyond 8°N for 4-7 ka as suggested by
Rossignol-Strick and Duzer (1979) then the changes in
land cover and all landforming processes must have been
(in tropical South America, Africa, also in India and SE
Asia) profound. Peters and Tetzlaff (1990) have suggested
a decline in rainfall of as much as two thirds in the
Sahelian zones at the LGM, and most writers now indi-
cate changes in the order of 50%, certainly in Africa.
Such a figure is consistent with landscape observations
in the area. Some diagnostic features of aridity include the
following from the forest and wetter savanna zones:
(1) Regolith-stripped granite slopes found widely
under present day forest and other woodland areas.
(2) Stonelines found within the forest zone and across
the savannas.
(3) Desiccated valley floors revealed by mining in the
Ghanaian forest zone.
(4) Apparent absence of sedimentary units in both
headwater and trunk rivers.
(5) Evidence of dry lake beds and swamps.
(6) Palaeopans, lunettes and other dune sands.
There are also:
(7) Large fans of coarse material.
(8) Widespread colluvium.
However, these may not always be markers of arid
conditions but may also have formed during transitional
climates as discussed below.
THE NATURE OF THE
P L E I S T O C E N E - H O L O C E N E TRANSITION
From the point of view of this discussion, it is the
nature of the Pleistocene-Holocene transitional climates
and of the subsequent Holocene variations in rainfall
amount and distribution that appear most important.
Although warmer conditions may have been apparent
before 13,000 BP, large palaeofloods on the Nile and the
Niger and also in smaller catchments in the seasonally
humid tropics of west Africa commenced after 12,700
BP. The overflow of Lake Victoria and the deposition of
the Sheik Hassan silts 30 m above the floodplain of the
Nile at Wadi Haifa (the Wild Nile) have been given dates
of 12,500-11,500 BP (Paulissen, 1986, 1989), while the
first major depositional events of this period in the mid-
dle Birim River of Ghana date to the same period
 196 Quaternary Science Reviews: Volume 14

TABLE 1. Tentative Chronology of Late Quaternary Environmental Change in the Humid Tropics

BP (C TM years) Probable environmental conditions (recorded examples in brackets)

3100-2400 Possibly drier, accompanied by deforestation and human occupation, and continuing to the present day.
West Africa (Ghana, post 2400 Brazil)
3400-3100 Increased humidity in forested tropics with rising discharges, several lesser oscillations of humidity
followed
4200-3400 Mid Holocene dry phase, probably quite severe (West Africa, Brazil)
5500-4200 Declining humidity in some areas of humid tropics (dry excursions in Amazonia, 5500; 4800)
7000-5500 Increased humidity and modest rise in lake levels
7800-7000 Reduced lake levels and river discharges in West Africa, Brazil
10,500-8000 Second humid period with high lak~ levels and discharges; re-establishment of forest between 9000-8500
11,000-10,500 Dry, cool interval in many areas; low lake levels
12,500-11,000 Rapid warming with unstable climates and prolonged heavy rains in tropical Africa, very high lake levels
(world-wide)
13,000/12,000-22/20,000 Becoming cold in uplands and dry in most lowlands; by 18,000 tree-line depressed 1000 m, rainfalls
possibly reduced by 50%; (most sites)
(the following early stages and dates are very tentative)
-22/20,000 Cooler, probably humid to sub-humid
> 32,000- (Ghana, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Brazil)
Cooling of upland climates evident, possibly
Post 40,000 becoming drier (Amazonia, Uganda)
(C j4 + TL dates)
ca. 52,000 Scattered records of sedimentation suggest rapid
63,000 (?)- warming at end of isotopic zone 3 - - dating insecure (Venezeula, Brazil, Kalimantan)
(Estimated ages)
ca. 63,000 Indications of cooler, drier conditions in
ca. 80,000- northern Queensland, Australia

Main Sources: Absy et al. (1989, 1991); Adamson et al. (1980); Butzer (1980); Coltrinari (1993); Kershaw (1978, 1992); Schubert
(1988); Soubi6s (1980); Street and Grove (1979); Talbot et al. (1984); Thomas and Tborp (1980, 1985); Thorp et al. (1990); Street-
Perrott and Perrott (1990).

( 1 2 , 7 0 0 - 1 2 , 4 0 0 BP) (Hall et al., 1985; Thorp and
Thomas, 1992). Van der Hammen et al. (1992a) have
also dated peaty layers to ca. 12,500 BP in the Caquetfi
River in Colombian Amazonia.
On the other hand, the major pulse of off-shore sedi-
mentation, at least from major African rivers, appears to
have taken place after 12,000 BE with the lower sapropel
muds of the eastern Mediterranean bracketed between
11,760 BP and 10,440 BP (Rossignol-Strick et al., 1982),
the sedimentation peaks in the Niger delta to ca. 11,500 BP
(Pastouret et al., 1978) and in the Congo estuary to 11,230
BP (Giresse and Lanfranchi, 1984). The sedimentation
rates increased by 4x in the Congo estuary and by 18x in
the Niger delta at these times. However, the latter was
strongly influenced by overflows from the Middle Niger
catchment and from Lake Chad (Pastouret et al., 1978).
The catchment responses marked by such changes possi-
bly began with the flushing of sediment from local hills-
lope stores and copious sedimentation in valley floors, fol-
lowed by increasing flood levels and scouring which led to
evacuation of sediment from large catchments.
The second Mediterranean sapropel is dated to the
period from ca. 9000-8000 BE the intervening hiatus now
being associated with the Younger Dryas episode and its
impact on tropical catchments. This gap is certainly
recognised in the sedimentation record from west Africa.
In the Birim River of Ghana, early Holocene sedimenta-
tion occurred after 9000 BP and continued for more than
1000 years, while in the Bafi-Sewa headwaters in Sierra
Leone, there is a concentration of channel sediments
between 9500-7800 BE In the Caquetfi River, renewed
humidity is dated to the period after 10,000 BE while
early Holocene floodplain building in equatorial western
Kalimantan may also have commenced around this time
with dates from basal gravels beneath the floodplains of
the Mandor and Raya rivers returning dates of 9970 BP
and 10,250 BP respectively (Thorp et al., 1990; Thorp
and Thomas, 1992). There is no clear evidence for the
Younger Dryas dry climates in western equatorial Africa
(Dechamps, 1990; Maley, 1990, 1991; Preuss, 1990).
There are abundant dates for the early Holocene plu-
vial, marked by prolonged high lake levels as well as by
fluvial sedimentation. However, what is not so clear is
how long these conditions persisted, neither is it agreed
what rainfall mechanisms were predominant and therefore
what the magnitude and frequency of rainfall events may
have been. This pluvial episode is sometimes represented
as persisting well into the middle Holocene, but after ca.
8000 BP there is evidence of drier conditions lasting per-
haps 500 years, with a return to greater humidity of cli-
mate until ca. 6000 BP (Gasse and Van Campo, 1994). In
the Saharan margins, the final drying out of the Sahara
Desert appears to have occurred after 5000 BE while in
the humid tropics many fluctuations in humidity have
probably occurred during the later Holocene (Table 1).
Van der Hammen et aL (1992a, b) indicate 3 dry phases
between 5000 and 3000 BP in Colombia, while a severe
dry phase appears to have occurred after 4500 BP in the
seasonally humid areas of Africa. This oscillation is not
apparent from the inner equatorial tropics of Africa, but
was recognised (ca. 3700 BP) in the Lake Bosumtwi
record (Talbot et al., 1984). As more detail becomes avail-
 M.F. Thomas and M.B. Thorp: Geomorphic Response to Climatic and Hydrologic Change
able, the division of the Holocene climates into periods of
stability and of rapid change may become less tenable.
If wetter conditions were established in Africa near
the Equator by 13,000 BE but did not become effective
in the southern margins of the Sahara until 10,000 or
even 9000 BP (Fabre and Petit Maire, 1988) then the syn-
chroneity of landscape response to global climate
changes must be subject to important qualifications
(Fairbridge, 1976). This may also mean that the number
of 'effective' fluctuations in rainfall, 'as reflected in land-
scape instability, lake and river sedimentation, will have
varied significantly between areas. In this discussion, cli-
mates having markedly less than 900 mm of modern rain-
fall are not considered.
VEGETATION CHANGES AND LANDSCAPE
DYNAMICS
How did vegetation cover and landscape dynamics
respond to these changes? In the humid tropics there are
now several records, from West Africa, Australia and
Brazil, suggesting the re-establishment of lowland forest
between 9000-8000 BP (Talbot and Delibrias, 1980;
Markgraf, 1989; Servant et al., 1989), and there is an
absence of records for forest cover during the wetter cli-
mates of the Pleistocene/Holocene transition, except in
favoured equatorial locations.
It is tempting to suggest that in many areas the forest
taxa were no longer present locally, and that migration of
the rainforest from possible refugia took up much of the
period and was arrested for 500-1000 years during the
Younger Dryas. The environmental controls over this
recovery may have included the unstable (and therefore
unsuitable for TRF) climate of the late Pleistocene and
earliest Holocene, and also the absence or continued loss
of soil cover in many areas. It has been hypothesised that
the period in itself was one of rapid hillslope erosion and
landscape change (Knox, 1972, 1975, 1984; Thomas and
Thorp, 1992; Roberts and Baker, 1993), and this must
have o p p o s e d the r e - e s t a b l i s h m e n t of e q u i l i b r i a
(biostasie) in landscapes that had experienced 6-7 ka of
dry conditions.
ALLUVIAL EVIDENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL
CHANGE
In respect of concepts of stream response to changes
in external controls there is a bias towards ideas devel-
oped for semi-arid systems (Bull, 1991; Blum et al.,
1994; Roberts and Baker, 1993; Schumm, 1975), and
despite attention being given to the operation of internal
thresholds (Schumm, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981)and the
concepts of complex response, most arguments are also
deficient in their attention to the dynamics of the wider
landscape. Knox (1983), Starkel (1983), Eybergen and
Imeson (1989) and Bull (1990, 1991) amongst others
have reviewed these problems.
Bull (1990) has pointed out that, on rising geologic
structures, 'aggradation events record brief reversals of
197
long-term tectonically induced downcutting', and that fill
terraces due to aggradation are the fundamental climatic
stream-terrace landform, and he clearly distinguishes
such major terraces from minor fill-cut forms due to
complex response mechanisms. The tread itself repre-
sents the time of crossing of the critical power threshold
as the stream switches from aggradation or equilibrium to
degradation. However, the duration of basin-wide and
regional phases of downcutting and the precise manner in
which these are linked to climate change are poorly
understood. Moreover, a period of widespread downcut-
ting must produce abundant sediment and this should be
traceable to particular sinks or stores. In so far as these
are present in off-shore sediments, available evidence
suggests rather brief periods of extensive erosion
(Pastouret et al., 1978).
Starkel (1983) and also Knox (1975) refer to 2500
year climatic cycles involving (inter alia) changes in veg-
etation, lake levels, and flood frequency, incorporating
short phases, 300-500 years, of high precipitation.
Starkel (1983) also argues in respect of the temperate
zone that both braided (glacial) and meandering (inter-
glacial) rivers aggrade and that the erosion which
occurred at the glacial-interglacial transition was 'related
to the change from braided to meandering river regimes'.
In the semi-arid zone of northern Africa, the rivers of the
Sahel (Talbot, 1980) and also the Blue and White Niles in
the Sudan (Williams and Adamson, 1980) appear to have
undergone such changes. Comparable transformations to
the regimes of rivers in the more humid tropics may also
have taken place at this time, but it is necessary to recog-
nise that this simple distinction can be misleading; some
humid tropical rivers possess anastomosing channels
which meander, while rivers of monsoon areas can
develop braid bars within meandering channels at low
discharges (Gupta and Dutt, 1989).
Of course, erosion at one place must lead to sedimen-
tation in another; the two processes are complementary
and the locus of each must shift with time irrespective of
external environmental change. Bull (1991) talks of
'threshold intersection points', shifting in time and space
at different scales. Nevertheless, widespread episodes of
Holocene stream erosion and sedimentation have been
shown to match palaeoclimatic signals (Brakenridge,
1980; Smith, 1992), despite the warnings given by Butzer
(1980).
Stream behaviour in tropical environments varies
strongly according to flow regime, with many monsoonal
rivers experiencing important changes of the channel
morphology between high floods and low flows, the
width of the channel and the organisation of the sedi-
ments mainly reflecting very high floods which recur on
an annual basis (Gupta and Dutt, 1989). However, the
floodplains of many rivers, such as the River Yore in
Thailand (Bishop, 1987) demonstrate the importance of
very large floods, occurring with lower frequency.
Bishop (1987) has argued that the river Yom had initially
freely migrated, depositing channel sands, but at some
point the channel had become stabilised and there was a
 198 Quaternary Science Reviews: Volume 14
switch to vertical accretion, leading to the accumulation
of fine-grained deposits, effectively forming an upper
floodplain which is only rarely overtopped by floods.
This same morphology is apparent in the Caquet~i River
in Colombia as recorded by Van der Hammen et al.
(1992a), and may be inferred from our studies of the
River Birim in Ghana (Hall et al., 1985). Description of
the River Mwanda in the rainforest area of Cameroon by
Kuete (1986) is consistent with these observations. At the
edge of the Yaound6 Plateau the fiver cuts through large
alluvial cones in a valley that displays a coarse gravel fill
grading upwards into finer, sandy terrace and floodplain
deposits. The low terrace containing coarse gravels was
thought to date close to 8560 BP (Kuete, 1990).
In the humid tropics of Ghana (R Birim) and Sierra
Leone (R Bail headwaters), free wash gravels dated to
pre 11,000 BP are found in bedrock channels, while early
Holocene (post 10,000 BP) aggradation is typified by
clay-bound gravel units and by clay lenses in braided
channel deposits. These latter characteristics appear to
mark a period of high flood peaks combined with abun-
dant suspended load. The mid-Holocene rivers appear to
show a trend towards single-thread, sandy, meandering
channels and floodplains evolving by lateral accretion in
response to lower peak discharges. Maley (1991) placed
this transition at around 7000 BE As the floodplains
evolved, fine overbank vertical accretion was accompa-
nied by the stabilisation of banks by vegetation. In the
middle Birim, for example, late Holocene fine overbank
deposits may be up to 5 m thick over both the floodplain
and the low terrace, indicating considerable channel sta-
bility during the later Holocene.
A recent study of palaeochannels of the Yore River in
the central plain of Thailand (Bishop and Godley, 1994)
concludes that discharges were high during the early
Holocene, but declined to much lower levels during the
middle to late Holocene; recovering to former levels dur-
ing the modern period post 1700 BE Calculations indi-
cate a factor 3-4x for Qbf, between the early Holocene
and middle H o l o c e n e . The h u m i d i t y of the early
Holocene is attested also by Lrffier et al. (1984) and by
Nutalaya et al. (1989, as quoted by Bishop and Godley,
1994). High flows on the Congo/Zaire River dating to the
period 10,000-8000 BP are referred to by Preuss (1990).
Histories of floodplain development can only be
sketched from tropical catchments, but in West Africa
three major phases can be postulated:
(1) Late Pleistocene and early Holocene cyclic sedi-
mentation with frequent catastrophic stripping of flood-
plain deposits.
(2) Middle Holocene aggradation with multiple shifts
from vertical to lateral accretion.
(3) Later Holocene burial of floodplains and low ter-
races by thick overbank deposits.
INTERPRETING CATCHMENT RESPONSE TO
CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE TROPICS
Attempts to interpret the chronologies of sedimenta-
tion derived from tropical floodplains encounter many of
the questions raised above. Late Pleistocene low terraces
(possibly > 32,000 and < 26,000 BP) occur along many
floodplains and may be overtopped by later sedimenta-
tion or covered by colluvium. In West Africa no dates >
40,000 BP were obtained, but in West Kalimantan a
Pleistocene terrace returned near basal finite dates 54,200
+2100/-1700 BP and 51,000 +3400/-2400 BP (Thorp et
al., 1990), and evidence from other locations suggests
that the upper surface of this terrace may be < 36,000 BE
It can also be noted that Kamaludin et al. (1993) record
prolonged sedimentation from 67,000-28,000 BP in
Perak (Malaysia) and that Van der Hammen et al.
(1992a) have evidence for a low terrace given as ca. >
55,000-26,000 BP on the River Caquet~i in Colombia. In
Koidu there is evidence for an important change in flu-
vial activity after ca. 36,000 BE marked by erosion into
earlier sediments and followed by the deposition of clays
with ages of ca. 25,000 BP (Thomas and Thorp, 1980).
After this (between ca. 22,000 and 20,500 BP) and
until ca. 12,700 BE an hiatus in the dates marks the
period of dry climates around the LGM. This is evident
from work undertaken in Amazonia (Van de Hammen
et al., 1992a,b), West Africa (Hall, 1985; Thomas and
Thorp, 1980; Thomas et al., 1985), and Kalimantan
(Thorp et al., 1990; Thorp and Thomas, 1993). The pos-
sibility that conditions were so severe that little sediment
or organic matter was entrained or preserved in the rivers
was suggested by Thomas and Thorp in 1980 and more
recently by Van der Hammen et al. (1992a).
During the dry period of the LGM many smaller rivers
of West Africa may have experienced only ephemeral
flows, but an absence of dated deposits makes such com-
ments speculative. Deep, sand-filled desiccation cracks in
the weathered phyllite beneath shallow tributary valleys
in southern Ghana (Junner, 1943; Hall et al., 1985) may
date from this period, while overlying mudflow deposits
may have formed later. Hillslope erosion at this time was
largely a result of local sediment redistribution during
local rainstorms, with the infilling of hillslope hollows.
These colluvial fills were exposed by mining activities in
Koidu and may actually conceal old gully sites (Dietrich
et al., 1986). It is likely that little sediment reached the
main channels, but much accumulated in valley heads,
as small tributaries atrophied and the drainage net
contracted.
In the Pantanal depression of Mato Grosso (Brazil),
large and complex palaeofans appear to mark a period, or
more likely periods, of dry conditions with an open vege-
tation cover, and the formation of dunes on their distal
areas suggests rainfalls low enough for localised aeolian
activity (modern rainfall ca. 800 mm year-1) (Klammer,
1982; Tricart, 1982; Clapperton, 1993). More extensive
palaeodunes are found on alluvial fans and plains in the
Orinoco Llanos (Clapperton, 1993), but in both cases the
ages attributable to these features are uncertain, recalling
debates about the origins and age(s) of the Kalahari sands
in Africa (D. Thomas, 1989).
A long dry period may have lasted from ca.
 M.F. Thomas and M.B. Thorp: Geomorphic Response to Climatic and Hydrologic Change 199

and former valley fills in hilly terrain may have been

70,000-40,000 BP in Africa (Maley, 1990), though much
m o r e is k n o w n of the aridity s p a n n i n g the L G M .
Although fan formation may have been a recurrent fea-
ture of the Pleistocene dry climates in the humid tropics,
as climate ameliorated after 13,000 BP, hillslopes were
probably subjected to more frequent and powerful sheet-
flood events and tributary channel extension led to the
evacuation of colluvium from hillslope hollows (Reneau
et al., 1986). In essence a fluvial landscape reasserted
itself, by reactivating drainage lines formed during earlier
humid phases of climate. This would have reduced catch-
ment response times to rainfall events and increased peak
discharges. Prolonged rain, falling on soils with high
rainfall acceptance, could also have led to landsliding,
and to continued widespread fan formation, especially in
modern savanna areas. Fans were later abandoned or
trenched as the sediment supply from upstream sources
diminished and seasonal stream flows became estab-
lished. However, no dates for this transition are currently
available.
During very large flood events which appear to have
occurred during this phase, this critical power of the
stream would have been enough to remove coarse grav-
els, leading to erosion of 'bedrock' channels. Many of
these were eroded into the saprolite/corestone zone in
Koidu, Sierra Leone. In eastern Zambia, both on the
plateau (> 1200 m a.s.l.) and in the Luangwa River
graben, where modern streams draining hillfoot zones
have indistinct or no stream channels (and are called
d a m b o s ) there is also evidence for torrential stream depo-
sition in the form of alluvial fans containing boulders up
to 1 m diameter. High runoff and sediment yields would
have characterised many hillslopes at this time and fre-
quent debris flows combined with fan building and
trenching may have taken place. Many 'head' deposits
excavated, but there is also evidence from the dambo val-
leys on the plateau landscape of N y i k a in Malawi
(Meadows, 1985) and from the Inyanga Highlands of
Zimbabwe (Tomlinson, 1974) to suggest a period of rapid
sedimentation post 12,000 BP. A climatic phase contain-
ing high flood peaks with intervening dry periods could
bring about accumulation and concentration of gravels
along the stream bed. In gravel-bedload rivers, pulses of
stream energy occur on different time scales, and any
vertical accretion deposits may be removed and renewed
many times in any single reach as flood waves pass
(Nanson, 1986). In the Birim River three superposed sed-
imentary (basal gravel) units are recognised, bracketed
by dates of 12,700 BP and 12,400 BP; 8800 BP and 7500
BP; 2090 BP and 1780 BP, but of course others may
occur in unsampled sites. These record the aggradation of
the river bed within a deep channel, some 5 m below the
previous bedrock surface. In this reach (between Wenchi
and Akwatia) the long-term degradation of the river
channel, witnessed by flights of terraces appears to have
been reversed throughout much of the Holocene period
(Hall et al., 1985).
In Koidu (Sierra Leone), the sedimentary units show a
similar arrangement in the larger valleys, with deposi-
tional episodes from pre 12,500 to 10,500 BP; 9500 to
7800 BP: pre 4300 to ca. 3200; post 3000 to 2300; post
1800 BP. Most of the smaller rivers flow over channel
sediments and do not reach bedrock levels exposed in the
late Pleistocene. Results from the Koidu basin and the
Birim valley are compared with those from the Nile and
Caquet~i rivers in Table 2 and interpreted in Table 3 and
Fig. 1.
In the Caquet~i valley (Colombia), the new floodplain
began forming after ca. 12,600 BP, and persisting until

TABLE 2. Dates of Late Quaternary sedimentation in Blue (B) and White (W) Nile, Caquetfi (Colombia), Koidu Basin (Sierra Leone)
and Birim (Ghana) in C '4 years BP

Nile* Caquet~t Birim; Koidu§

> 2090- < 1780

ca. 3000-ca. 2300
> 4300-ca. 3200
7000(B and W)
7500(B)
8400-8100(W) 10,000- > 8800-< 7500 > 9500-7800
12,500-11,000(B and W) 12,600-11,000 > 12,700-< 12,400 > 12,500-< 10,500

*After Williams and Adamson (1980), ]-after Van der Hammen et al. (1992a,b), Safter Hall et al. (1985), §after Thomas and Thorp
(1980).

TABLE 3. Late Quaternary fluvial chronology based on studies from the Middle Birim (Ghana) and koidu Basin Headwaters (Sierra
Leone) in C TMyears BP

3000 BP-present - increasing discharges and deforestation, sediment reworking and deposition
-

ca. 4500 BP-3000 - - mid-Holocene dry phase, minimal discharges

7000 BP--ca. 4500 - reduced discharges and limited reworking of sediments
-

10,500-ca. 7000 - re-establishment of forest; some shallow bedrock channels and coarse sediments
-

ca. 11,000 - - possible drier interval lasting around 500 ka

13,500-ca. 11,000 - increasing discharges and large floods, channel cutting and deposition of coarse gravels
-

21,000-13,500 minimal sedimentation, dry with low magnitude flash floods

- -

Pre 36,000-21,000 - - low terrace, humid/sub-humid oscillations, cool

 200
,.i J ..........
RELEASE FROM
LOCALSTORES
SHEET FLOODS
DEBRIS FLOWS /
I I I t
10.5
13 12 11 10
FIG. 1. Late Quaternary stream activity in the Humid Tropics of West Africa. Curve peaks denote timing of major sedi-
mentary units; troughs/arrows indicate likely periods of channel cutting. Diagonal shading indicates periods of dry
around 11,000 BE after which the sequence was partly
eroded during the Younger Dryas/E1 Abra stadial (Van
der Hammen et al., 1992a). After 10,000 BP Van der
Hammen et al. (1992b) records renewed sedimentation
and 'possible extensive inundation'. The Holocene sands
and clays of the Blue (B) and White (W) Niles also show
comparable flood peaks in the early/mid Holocene,
a c c o r d i n g to Williams and A d a m s o n (1980):
12,500-11,000 BP (B and W); 8400-8100 BP (W); 7500
BP (B); ca. 7000 BP (B and W). But the picture is less
clear in the later Holocene.
THE EVOLUTION OF FLOODPLAINS
After ca. 9000 BE and over a 102-103 year period, the
flood peaks on many lowland tropical rivers probably
became broader and less high, due to stabilisation of a
seasonal climate and the recovery of vegetation and soil.
This allowed the rivers to build up their alluvial plains,
and in due course to become single thread meandering
streams, at which stage the rivers might cross critical
internal thresholds and switch back to a degradation,
causing the cut into the sediments of the previous phase.
The most striking change in the sedimentology of the
river sediments is that from clay-rich flood deposits of
the early Holocene to the sandy, silty sediments of a more
rhythmic, seasonal river.
Quaternary Science Reviews: Volume 14
)
/
--tm~-
YOUNGER FLOODPLAIN
FORMATION
............
/
/
I I ( m [ I m m I
3.5
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Kyr
climate.
If the first part of this sequence took place between
12,500 and 11,000 BE followed by a period of dimin-
ished stream flows during the Younger Dryas, then dur-
ing the period from ca. 10,250 to 8000 BE after a repeti-
tion of earlier events during which discharges became
larger (but not perhaps flood peaks higher) and sediment
supply was initially high (sources prepared in previous
transitional period), forested conditions gradually became
more widespread and single thread rivers built thick
overbank depositional sequences. Stabilisation of stream
banks by fine silts and by vegetation would have inhibit-
ed lateral migration and box-shaped channels, as in the
Birim, became common on larger rivers. The compro-
mise between vertical accretion and overbank flooding
meant that the latter became rarer, and occasional (102
years) high floods probably led to avulsion and splay for-
mation on floodplains and to the evacuation of sediments
from the small valleys, including the dambos and bolis.
In the mid-Holocene, dry conditions recurred after
4500 BP and possibly at other times in areas with season-
al climates, but the forest probably remained intact and it
is not clear what the impact was on the rivers of the time,
except that they must have experienced diminished flows
within channels designed for much larger discharges;
possibly nothing much happened. However, bank insta-
bility and cavitation may have occurred, and during sub-
sequent high floods, some degree of lateral stream migra-

M.F. Thomas and M.B. Thorp: Geomorphic Response to Climatic and Hydrologic Change
tion, together with the generation of large amounts of fine
sediment from bank erosion would have characterised the
system.
H I L L S L O P E PROCESSES
The concentration on the chronology of lacustrine and
alluvial deposition has to some extent limited our under-
standing of the problems of landscape dynamics, and
tempted some writers to seek an immediate connection
between processes on hillslopes and events in stream
channels. But the question of hillslope-channel coupling
is complex and research into this question is still tenta-
tive, at least for the tropics.
Colluvial sequences that accumulate below hillslopes
are seldom securely dated and difficulties arise from the
often poorly defined stratigraphy (Daris, 1990, 1991;
Watson et al., 1990). However, the widespread occur-
rence of colluvium in tropical landscapes in both humid
and highly seasonal, semi-arid areas, has great signifi-
cance for geomorphological study. First, because it repre-
sents a major store of sediment, not yet delivered to the
river systems; second, because it constitutes a record of
past environments and their dominant surface processes.
Colluvial deposits have accumulated to depths exceed-
ing 20 m quite widely in the humid tropics. In S~o Paulo
State, Ferreira and Monterio (1985) estimated that 50%
of the land surface is underlain by colluvium, and
throughout eastern Brazil, where rainfalls exceed 1500
mm year ~, complex colluvial/alluvial stratigraphies have
been recorded (De Meis et al., 1984; De Oliveira, 1990),
often associated with major landsliding or other mass
movement on hillslopes (Modenesi, 1988).
In southeastern Brazil, Bigarella and Andrade (1965)
and Bigarella and Becker (1975) deduced from slope
deposits, stone-lines and stream sedimentation that semi-
arid conditions had affected eastern Brazil from 3°S to
36°S, possibly during the LGM, in areas which today
receive 1400-3000 mm precipitation (summarised by
Ab'Saber, 1982; Bigarella and Andrade-Lima, 1982).
This work is supported by more recent interpretations of
hillslope deposits in SE Brazil (De Meis and Monteiro,
1979; De Meis et al., 1984), while the dating of sedi-
ments from enclosed depressions in the Serra Dos
Carajas (720 m), close to the forest-savanna boundary in
Pardi State (Absy et al., 1989, 1991; Soubibs et al., 1989)
provides clear evidence for alternating periods of forest
and grassland or savanna, one of which is bracketed by
the crucial dates 20,000-13,000 BE
Similar colluvial stratigraphy was found in the high-
lands of west Cameroon and described by Hori (1986)
and Tamura (1990). Extensive colluviation is also evident
on the Jos Plateau of Nigeria (rainfall ca. 1200 mm
y e a r ~) (Hill and Rackham, 1978; Zeese, 1991), and also
in the wetter savanna areas of eastern Zambia (rainfall ca.
1000 mm yearq), as well as in the drier savanna areas
of southern Africa, where rainfalls are less than 700 mm
year t (Watson et al., 1983; Dardis, 1988, 1990). In all
these areas colluviation is associated with fan formation,
201
and with more extensive spreads of p e d i s e d i m e n t in
savanna regions.
There is also a clear association of fan building with
landsliding in the hilly terrain around Chipata in eastern
Zambia, while strong mass movement is in evidence
alongside colluvial accumulation in eastern Brazil. In less
hilly areas much of the colluvium is in the form of lami-
nated sheet-flood sediments, small low angle mudflows,
and amorphous sandy loam accumulations of unknown
origin. Because the term 'colluvium' is itself so ambigu-
ous, special care needs to be taken, when discussing these
deposits, to specify as closely as possible their processes
of formation.
In the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.A., studies of col-
luvium infilling hillslope hollows revealed both a scatter
of ages and also a concentration of basal dates (9 from 11
sites) between 15,000 and 9000 BP which Reneau et al.
(1986) attributed to the changing environments of the late
Pleistocene-Holocene transition. It is likely that a com-
parable history will be revealed in the tropics. In south-
eastern Brazil, De Moura et al. (1993) have established
dates of 9500-10,000 BP for both a buried soil within the
colluvial covers and also for fluvio-lacustrine sediments
in the Rio Para%a do Sul valley. This appears to confirm
a very wet period in southeastern Brazil following ca.
10,000 BE but also indicates both prior and subsequent
landscape instability and widespread sedimentation, pos-
sibly due to periods of drier climate. Similar conclusions
can be derived from buried organic horizons within allu-
vial fan deposits in Minas Gerais which have ages
between ca. 9500 and 8500 BP (Servant et al., 1989).
The onset of fan accumulation is not dated, but Pflug
(1969) gave one radiocarbon date for a period of rapid
sedimentation of ca. 14,000 BP in the nearby Rio Doce
valley, and the fans may be related to this. Also in south-
eastern Brazil, it is interesting to note that Riccomini et
al. (1989) have offered dates of ca. 52,000 BP and 18,000
BP for two different stone-lines in the Taubat6 Basin near
S~,o Paulo.
In C a m e r o o n , Hori (1986) found extensive fine
grained superficial deposits overlying a gravel layer on
weathered bedrock. Generally, only 1-3 m thick, these
deposits were thicker and probably older in the west than
in the east, possibly signifying an earlier re-establishment
of the rainforest in the west. In one section two dates of
ca. 8500 BP were obtained from the lower horizons;
other dates fall into groups between 3000 and 2500 BE
ca. 1000 BP and 350 to 300 BP (Hori, 1986). A summary
of some early Holocene events is given in Table 4.
DISCUSSION - - L A N D S C A P E RESPONSE AND
CLIMATE C H A N G E
During the 20,000-13,000 B P Dry Period o f the L G M
No adequate summary of the relationships discussed
in this paper is yet available, and existing models remain
unsatisfactory when applied to tropical environments.
The nature of the vegetation changes in the tropics at the
LGM must have been very varied, not only as between
 202 Quaternary Science Reviews: Volume 14
TABLE 4. Timing of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene colluviation and related sedimentation at specific sites in the Humid
Tropics
Location and source
Jose Plateau, Nigeria (Zeese, 1990)
Taubat6 basin, Brazil (Riccomini et al., 1989)
Bamenda Highlands, West Cameroon (Tamura, 1986)
Rio Doce, Brazil (Pflug, 1969)
Nyika Malawi (Meadows, 1985)
Rio Parafba do Sul, Brazil (De Moura et al., 1993)
Minas Gerais, Brazil (Servant et al., 1989)
Southern Cameroon (Hori, 1986)
Ok Menga, Papua New Guinea (Murray and Olsen, 1990)
(In Pacific Northwestern U.S.A. - - Colluvium-filled hollows --9000-15,000 BR Reneau et al., 1986)
deciduous woodland areas and tropical rainforests, but
also between the perhumid, equatorial areas and the sea-
sonal and, particularly, the monsoonal climates (see
Lanfranchi and Schwartz, 1990). The weakening of the
monsoon and the strengthening of the NE Trades at the
LGM, together with the more limited latitudinal swing of
the ITCZ, could have reduced rainfalls in some areas
strongly affected by these factors by more than 50% and
perhaps by as much as 66%. In some very sensitive areas,
represented today by rainforest marginal climates,
changes of landcover and soil moisture were probably
profound and persisted for several ka. Cooling and
reduced convection and evaporation in the rainforest
heartlands were possibly also effective in altering the
ecosystem towards more open montane vegetation
(Maley and Livingstone, 1983).
Formerly forested landscapes of this time appear to
have experienced widespread local movements of sedi-
ment across steep slopes and loss of fines from surface
soils. Steep slopes became stripped of part of their
regolith and corresponding colluviation took place on
lower slopes. On planar interfluves and across piedmont
footslopes, sheetfloods occurred and mudflows took
place in shallow tributary valleys. Stone pavements were
formed, even in many present-day forest areas. However,
these were more widespread in the former deciduous
woodland areas, where satellite imagery (e.g. Zambia)
indicates the widespread formation of pans, presumably
by deflation after many small streams ceased to flow.
Dune formation, mainly in the drier tropics, has been
well documented for this period.
During the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition,
13, 000-1 O,000 B P
At the Pleistocene-Holocene transition climates are
thought to have become unstable, but the changes to rain-
fall amount and distribution are little understood.
Widespread evidence for very high floods on rivers both
large and small suggests a major increase in storm size
and frequency in low latitudes, while the pan-tropical rise
in lake levels indicates a major change in water balance,
reflecting enhanced rainfall totals rather than reduced
evaporation (which presumably would have increased
with post-glacial wanning of climate).
Depositional feature Date (in C 14years BP)
fans, basal alluvium 18,000 BP
stone line
18,000 BP
slope gravels ca. 20,000 BP
valley aggradation 14,000 BP
dambo valley infill post 12,000 BP
fluvio-lacustrine sediments
10,000-9500 BP
organic horizons in fan deposits 9500-8500 BP
lower horizons of colluvium 8500 BP
upper colluvium ca. 8000 BP
It also seems likely that deeper seated landslides
would have been generated as climates became increas-
ingly humid. Evidence has been adduced above to indi-
cate that rivers were subject to very high discharges,
some augmented by lake overflows, which combined to
create major fluxes of water and sediment in large catch-
ments. There may be an important association here
between increased rates of hillslope erosion, especially
from earlier sediment stores; deposition of coarse, clay-
rich channel sediments; the flushing of clays through the
catchment system; and the marked accumulation of
kaolinitic clay in deltas and estuaries.
The Younger Dryas was probably important in the
tropics as a period of drier climates lasting more than 500
years, and this must have halted the spread of the forests
outward from their refugia or heartland areas in the inner
Congo and Amazon basins. However, the lake level data
do not suggest that the severity of climate was as great as
during the glacial maximum. Hillslope erosion would
have continued and colluviation may have been wide-
spread at this time, but fluvial activity was diminished.
The Holocene Pluvial, 10,000-8000 B P
The Holocene pluvial phase post 10,000 BP led to
much higher lake levels than before and to renewed flu-
vial activity on a scale c o m p a r a b l e with the late
Pleistocene in some areas, but apparently did not lead to
major sedimentation events in lower reaches and off-
shore deltas. This has been interpreted as an indication of
the stabilisation of the landscape as rainforest and other
woodland vegetation was finally re-established between
9500 and 8500 BE according to location and site condi-
tions. But it must also reflect the integration and evolu-
tion of Holocene floodplains, and the build-up of sedi-
ments, where both lateral and vertical accretion deposits
remain stored in large volumes.
This seems to have been the period of most wide-
spread mass movement and colluviation. Although land-
slides are seldom dated, many areas exhibit signs of geo-
logically recent landsliding, yet beyond the range of local
memory and showing signs of post-depositional weather-
ing (but no duricrusting). There is no doubt that palae-
olandslides are common features throughout much of the
humid tropics: along the dissected margins of eastern
 203
M.F. Thomas and M.B. Thorp: Geomorphic Response to Climatic and Hydrologic Change

to produce the large numbers of deep seated slides found

Brazil (Modenesi, 1988), in many hill masses of Sierra
Leone, including the Freetown Peninsula, in western
Kalamantan, and also in savanna areas such as eastern
Zambia. The impression is given of landscapes that have
experienced a recent phase of quite unparalleled morpho-
genetic activity which was triggered by a concentration
of high magnitude rainfall events (and probably higher
annual rainfall totals).
It is true that landsliding is a recurrent process today
in the humid tropics, and that it is a recognised hazard
within the present climatic environment (Thomas, 1994).
But the most frequent events involve shallow debris
slides; the deep seated, slump-slides have longer histories
and different trigger mechanisms. They are usually
dependent on the occurrence of major precipitation
events, often following higher than average antecedent
rainfall over weeks or months. These conditions probably
recur at a frequency of 10 L 102 years, and for such events
_.
/ \
/ ,~,
, /
in many hilly areas of the tropics, a period of 103 years
would have been required. The association of landslide
debris with Quaternary terraces and abandoned flood
deposits in neighbouring valleys, together with the evi-
dence for early Holocene colluviation (Table 4) supports
the view that many landslide events were concentrated
into periods of wetter climate.
It is therefore suggested that the early Holocene plu-
vial period, as it progressed, may have led first to further
debris flows and fan accumulation, then subsequently to
fan and terrace dissection and to channel cutting as the
amount and calibre of load supplied to rivers diminished
after ca. 9500 BE However, the forest cover did not pre-
vent the development of deep seated landslides. When
these were first initiated is not known, but the period of
most frequent landsliding may have ended as rainfall
reduced after 8000 BP (Table 1, Figs 1 and 2).
/,"
//
/ /
//
//
/
/ ///
// //
/
,t /
/
/
/
/

GENERALISED LAKE STATUS

40 20 ~/:>30" 20 10 <1%
TRF

~ FORESTcovER
/
/
/
I ~ -'~ ',,,'T.OEFORE~-AT'O"
f
I . . . . .

f, /,, ,
/ /'~,//" SURFACE EROSION
/ \ - "
/ / / - " , \
\ /f/~ ~ f SLIDES

.... ............................................................................. ..........................................................

ALL EROSION

I I I I 10.5 I I I [ I I I 3.5 I I i
14 13 12 11 1{) 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 t
Kyr BP

I V//, OR.EROI
FIG. 2. Climate, environment and land surface processes in the humid Tropics during the last 14 ka.
 204
Quaterna~ Science Reviews: Volume 14
The Middle and Late Holocene
Reductions in peak discharges from the Nile and
Congo catchments after ca. 8000 BP probably indicate
changes to the rainfall regimes, in their upper catch-
ments, while declining humidity of climate in the Serra
dos Carajas, Brazil, is implied by Absy et al. (1991).
However, this signal is not found in pollen records from
western equatorial Africa (Lanfranchi and Schwartz,
1990), and is not a major one in the world-wide lake
level data presented by Street-Perrott et al. (1985). At
lake Bosumtwi in Ghana, recovery took place very rapid-
ly after ca. 7000 BP. Although relatively humid condi-
tions persisted at most sites for perhaps 2 millenia, there
is no evidence for the truly pluvial conditions of the early
Holocene recurring.
Since ca. 8000 BP many small channels have become
infilled with sediment, creating the widespread alluviated
and partly channelless valleys or ' d a m b o s ' , many of
which conceal buried channels. These channel fills will
have different ages, but the reduction of stream power in
the mid-Holocene is possibly one reason for their wide
occurrence, while the colluviation events, also of differ-
ent ages will have continued to form stratified layers on
lower hillslopes. These later periods and episodes are not
the focus of this review, but it is recognised that oscilla-
tions of climate on a scale of centuries or millenia did
not end with the supposed Holocene Pluvial. However,
general conclusions concerning the magnitude of subse-
quent climate swings are difficult to draw from current
evidence. According to Bishop and Godley (1994) fiver
discharges in Thailand were generally low throughout
this period and only recovered after 1700 BE
According to Street-Perrott et al. (1985), lake levels
world-wide fell after 5000 BP and were generally low
after 4000 BE In the Sahel of Africa, final desiccation set
in around 4500 BP (Fabre and Petit Maire, 1988) and this
is matched by many studies from the Sahara and arid
Australia. In the more humid areas of Africa it appears to
h a v e b e c o m e drier a f t e r ca. 4000 BP, when L a k e
Bosumtwi was low (Talbot and Johannessen, 1992) and
vegetation from the Rukiga Highlands of Uganda signi-
fies dry conditions (Taylor, 1990).
The accompanying figures (Figs 1 and 2) attempt to
summarise the findings of this review but they are pre-
sented in the knowledge that they involve some specula-
tion and that the data base for determining the sedimen-
tary and environmental histories of tropical floodplains
remains inadequate. The identification of stratigraphic
and sedimentary units and their allocation to particular
time periods, assumes that field survey has been adequate
to sample all surviving deposits, and that local erosion
has not removed sediments of a given age that could be
found elsewhere in the floodplain. In all stratigraphic sec-
tions the time slice obtained can obscure a wider appreci-
ation of the continuity of sedimentation within river sys-
tems. Individual mass movements, even when securely
dated, may also denote only localised conditions of hills-
lope instability, triggered possibly by random events.
However, when these and other problems are recog-
nised, progress can be made. Three guiding principles
emerge from this review: (1) field sampling and survey
should be on a scale sufficient to place individual sites
and sections within a wider context of regional palaeo-
activity; (2) inferences from stream sediments and collu-
vium should be considered in relation to data from other
sources and disciplines, and weight given to the conver-
gence of evidence towards an outline chronology of
events; and (3) tentative explanations should be advanced
on the basis of current knowledge concerning modern
processes and morphogenesis in the tropics. The data
base, however, remains inadequate and a concerted pro-
gramme of research directed towards the analysis of rep-
resentative catchments in different tropical environments
is required, in order to p r o v i d e w e l l - c o n s t r a i n e d
chronologies of alluvial and colluvial deposits.
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