Laterites, archives of past climate and keys to present development

Scientific result

3 November 2025

The scarlet lands covering the plains and plateaus of West Africa are much more than just a typical tropical landscape. These laterites bear witness to a geological history spanning tens of millions of years, shaped by interactions between the climate and the Earth’s surface. Research conducted in Burkina Faso by IRD scientists and their Burkinabe partners sheds light on the processes and events that shaped the lateritic landscapes. Based on high-resolution mapping, geochemical analyses, and precise dating of laterites at a reference site in the north-central part of the country, this work proposes a new model for the evolution of the African surface.

Read the full article, including interviews with Dominique Chardon (DR IRD GET) and Benjamin Sawadogo (LaGE, U. Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Ouagadougou) on the IRD Le Mag’ website.

Contact GET: Dominique Chardon

Sources :

Dominique Chardon, Benjamin Sawadogo & Ousmane Bamba, Relationships between African landforms, regolith materials, and Cenozoic climate change: Implications for sedimentary source-to-sink systems, Earth-Science Reviews, october 2025

DOI : 10.1016/j.earscirev.2025.105187

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