FAROUK EL-BAZ AWARD LECTURE: DUNES AS GEOPROXIES: CAN THE PRESENT BE THE KEY TO THE PAST AND FUTURE

The spatial extent of dunes and aeolian sediments in some environments makes them both critical palaeoenvironmental proxies and potentially susceptible to major changes in future dynamics under climate change impacts. Their ‘value’ as geoproxies is also critical given the common dearth of other records of Quaternary change in the systems in which they are common. Add to this the situation where aridity and drought are increasingly viewed as critical drivers of early human behaviour, especially in an African context, their value as records of past conditions ought to be high. Despite significant advances in the geochronometric control of dune deposits, their utility as robust archives of change is not always recognised. Why is this? Key issues are explored, and it is argued that the wrong questions are sometimes asked of dune deposits, but also that the use of present systems to define past (and future) dynamic controls is hampered by issues of interpreting current dune dynamics.