Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book brings together recent work on southern Africa's biophysical landscapes in as much as landscapes both influence, and are influenced by, environmental change. It discusses the main evidence for and controls on long-term landscape evolution in southern Africa. The book looks at southern African rivers in their capacity as a fresh water resource. It also introduces vegetation as the fourth key component (following geomorphology, fresh water and soils) of the biophysical landscape. The book discusses southern African agriculture and a changing biophysical environment. It examines the many challenges of dating the spatially varied impacts of climate across southern Africa within both summer and winter rainfall zones. The imprint of these patterns of changing temperature and precipitation are still not entirely clear, which contributes to the challenge of predicting future scenarios for environmental change.