ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to review the state of the environmental sciences in the Sahara and to consider their wider relevance in a variety of contexts. In particular we focus on the links between the physical and social sciences, and interdisciplinary links between different research areas. A major aim of the paper is to demonstrate the relevance of Saharan research in a number of fields for wider global issues such as climate change and human adaptation. The paper is partly structured as a "narrative history" of the Sahara, on the one hand in order to address a range of issues relating to prehistoric, historic, contemporary and future climatic and environmental change, and on the other to illustrate the relevance of palaeoenvironmental, archaeological and historical information for studies of twenty first century human-environment interaction.
