DC 4 – University of Glasgow, Scotland
Paidamoyo Hazel Chingono is an environmental archaeologist. Her research explores the relationship between past communities and the environment in southern Africa. She is interested in landscape archaeology, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications in archaeology, and Indigenous knowledge of land use systems and climate change. Her work examines farming communities of southern Africa and the spatial relations between their built and natural environments. She primarily uses GIS tools and spatial statistics to analyse these relationships. Presently, she is working on reconstructing past land use and changes in land use in southern Africa to evaluate how land use may have affected local past and present climates.
AGRI-DRY Project:
Changing land use over the Holocene: Southern Africa
Land use and changes in land use impact the carbon cycle, which consequently affects the Earth’s climate systems, resulting in global crises such as climate change and food insecurity. Research on land use and land use change enables researchers to evaluate the effects of land use on environmental systems, biodiversity loss, and the implications for the atmosphere, climate, and sea levels. These studies are crucial because they inform the modelling of the carbon cycle, project future climate scenarios, and guide policy.
Focusing on southern Africa—unique for its long occupation history, biodiversity, and climate—her role is to quantify mid-Holocene land use and land use changes. This will facilitate the calculation of carbon loss resulting from land use and land use changes in the region, which may have impacted local climates in the past and continue to do so today. Geographic Information Systems and other computational software will be employed to carry out environmental and statistical modelling. Paidamoyo’s research will synthesise past land use in southern Africa, providing insight into historical resilience strategies and informing policy on sustainable land use management.
AGRI-DRY 