Crescent Island Crater Lake, Kenya
Reference
Lamb, H., Darbyshire, I. and Verschuren, D. 2003. Vegetation response to rainfall variation and human impact in central Kenya during the past 1100 years. The Holocene 13: 285-292.
Reference
Lamb, H., Darbyshire, I. and Verschuren, D. 2003. Vegetation response to rainfall variation and human impact in central Kenya during the past 1100 years. The Holocene 13: 285-292.
Description
The authors present high-resolution pollen data from an 1100-year sediment core taken from Crescent Island Crater Lake (0.75°S, 36.37°E), a subbasin of Lake Naivasha, in the central Rift Valley of Kenya, which served as a proxy record of changes in the balance between regional precipitation and evaporation. The Medieval Warm Period (~ AD 900-1200) was identified as a prolonged period of drought in which the surrounding forest contracted and the lake level dropped. Furthermore, from the authors' Figure 3 it can be seen that the MWP drought was of greater magnitude and duration than recent 20th century drought.