Southern African desertification predicted due to climate change

[muriel_volestrangler]

In a paper appearing in the British journal Nature, researchers warn that much of southern Africa could be transformed into a roaming, Sahara-like desert as the dunes of the Kalahari become eroded and unstabilised by global warming.

For thousands of years, these dunes -- a swathe extending from 10 degrees to 30 degrees latitude south, from Angola to northern South Africa -- have been used for pastoral or agricultural farming.
...
In the southern dunefield (in eastern Namibia and northern South Africa), the dunes start to move "significantly" by 2039, a phenomenon likely to be followed in the eastern dunefields (eastern Botswana and western Zimbabwe) by

"By 2099, all dunefields are highly dynamic, from northern South Africa to Angola and Zambia," say the authors, led by David Thomas of Oxford University's Centre for the Environment.

http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=africa&item=050629170108.h36wv8i1.php