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East African soil erosion recorded in a 300 year old coral colony from Kenya
Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia
Climate Risk Analysis, Halle, Germany
Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York, USA
Departments of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia
Soil erosion is a key socio-economic and environmental problem in Kenya, which has been poorly documented due to the lack of long, continuous records. Here we present Ba/Ca records from Porites corals from the Malindi coral reef documenting the flux of suspended sediment from the Sabaki River with a sub-weekly resolution for the last 300 years. While sediment flux from the Sabaki River is almost constant between 1700 and 1900, a continuous rise in sediment flux is observed since 1900, first due to British settlements and afterwards due to steadily increasing demographic pressure on land use. The peak in suspended sediment load and hence soil erosion occurred between 1974 and 1980 when there is a five to tenfold increase relative to natural levels. This is attributed to the combined effects of dramatically increasing population, unregulated land use, deforestation and severe droughts in the early 1970's. We conclude that despite laudable attempts to instigate soil conservation measures, it is unlikely that there will be a sustainable reduction in soil erosion without a significant improvement in socio-economic conditions.
Received 20 October 2006; accepted 5 January 2007; published 22 February 2007.
Citation: (2007), East African soil erosion recorded in a 300 year old coral colony from Kenya, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L04401, doi:10.1029/2006GL028525.
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