A T (Dick) Grove, MA

Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Deceased

Physical and human geography of Africa, climatic change and desertification. Landscape and environmental change in Mediterranean Europe. Holocene environmental change.

Dick Grove, 1924-2023 – An appreciation

Alfred Thomas Grove, known universally as Dick, was born in Evesham, Worcestershire, on 8^th April 1924. He died at home in Cambridge on 9^th July 2023, aged 99.  His father was a fruit and vegetable grower and merchant. Dick attended Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Evesham. He had his first airborne flight as an 11-year-old when long-distance aviation pioneer Sir Alan Cobham brought his Flying Circus to Dick’s home town. The experience proved to be defining and he subsequently went on to develop a deep interest in and desire for flying.

At the age of 17 in 1941 he entered St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, as an Exhibitioner to read Geography. On arrival he joined the Cambridge University Air Squadron, where he learned to fly, and this led to him joining the RAF as an officer in the air training command. His studies were interrupted by war duties, for he was called up into the Royal Air Force in August 1942. Attaining the rank of Flight Lieutenant, he served until 1945. His flying experience included a stint at the Air Training Corps in Cambridge in 1942, before being posted to Calgary and Edmonton in Canada where he was attached to the RAF training command, serving as an instructor on a number of aircraft types, including Harvards and Mosquitos. The latter was a highly versatile aircraft which only the most proficient aviators were allowed to fly. At the age of 75 he was still able to recite his pre-flight and emergency checklists from memory and enormously enjoyed a 75^th birthday present of a flight in a Harvard, during which he put on a 20-minute aerobatic display! It was while flying that Dick began to begin to observe and record geographical features of the lands below, which were not visible at ground level.

During his wartime experience in Canada he became a proficient horse rider in the summer, and skier and skater in the winter. He continued to grace the ice on the ponds and floods around the Cambridgeshire fens well into his 80’s.

The war ended as he was preparing to be reallocated to Fighter Command in the Far East. He resumed his academic studies at Cambridge, graduating with a First Class honours degree in 1947. During 1947-9 he went to Nigeria to report on soil erosion on behalf of the Colonial Office on the Jos Plateau and gullying in the Ibo country of the south eastern part of that country. He was made an Assistant District Officer. He showed that much of this erosion was of some antiquity. This was the beginning of a lifelong interest in the complex interplay of natural environmental change and human action.  It was at this time, on a flight from Kaduna, that he first became intrigued by the evidence of former shorelines of Lake Chad, for some much wetter periods in the past, and in the corduroy-like patterns of fossil dune fields in northern Nigeria, left from past dry climatic periods. He was offered a permanent post in Nigeria but the then Professor of Geography in Cambridge, Alfred Steers, persuaded him to return to Cambridge University as a Demonstrator in the Department of Geography. He remained in Cambridge for the rest of his career, with the exception of brief spells in the University of Legon in what is now Ghana, and at UCLA. He was made a University Lecturer in 1954 and eventually became Senior Lecturer. He was elected a Fellow of Downing College in 1963, where he served as Tutor, Senior Tutor, Vice Master (during a difficult period of student unrest in the early 1970s) and Director of Studies in Geography. He used his rooms in Downing as a place for not only teaching, but also for entertaining undergraduates and graduates. He was Director of the Centre for African Studies during 1980-6. When he died Dick was the longest standing Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, having become a fellow in 1947.

In 1950 and 1951 he joined field parties in the Jotunheimen of Norway that were led by the glacial geomorphologist, Vaughan Lewis. It was in Norway that he got to know Jean Clark, a Newnham graduate student, whom he subsequently married in 1954.

As a Cambridge undergraduate, under the direction of Alfred Steers, Grove was enlisted with others to help with the regular plane table surveys of Scolt Head Island and Blakeney Point on the North Norfolk coast; by the 1950s Dick was co-directing this programme with Steers. The Nature Conservancy’s 1954 map of Scolt Head Island, directed by Alfred Steers and Dick with field survey by R.J. Small and Peter Haggett, remains the finest (and easily the most useful) map of the barrier island ever made, modern technologies notwithstanding. Dick wrote on the impacts of the catastrophic 1953 storm surge on the East Anglian coast; remarkably, 25 years later he was in the field party, under the leadership of David Stoddart, which mapped the impacts of the 1978 southern North Sea storm surge.

Dick travelled widely in Africa. In 1952 he returned to the Katsina area of Nigeria, and was able to use air photographs to examine the old dune systems of the erg of Hausaland. In the summer of 1958 he took part in a joint Army-University of Cambridge expedition to the Tibesti Massif in the central Sahara. The expedition was led by R. Akester and was made possible by the assistance of the Army in Tripoli. With eight officers and NCOs they left Tripoli on 20 June 1957 in four Land-Rovers and three Bedford trucks.  They arrived in Zouar, at that time headquarters of the French of northern Tibesti, on July 7. Dick set out on camels to ride through western Tibesti. He travelled to the Toussidi Volcano which overlooks the great caldera of the Trou au Natron. The expedition arrived back in Tripoli on September 14^th without having experienced any mishaps.

The Hovercraft in West Africa. (Source: https://kickasstrips.com/2014/06/the-8000km-trans-african-hovercraft-expedition-of-1969/) (Accessed 14^th July 2023)

Dick participated in the longest ever hovercraft journey – a trip of around 8,000 km (5,000 miles) –  by the British Trans-African Hovercraft Expedition, under the leadership of David Smithers. Between 15 October 1969 and 3 January 1970 they journeyed through eight West African countries in a Winchester class SRN6, travelling  up the Senegal and down the Niger to its confluence with the Benue, and up that river to Lake Chad. During this expedition Dick collected water samples from the Senegal, Niger, Benue and Shari, which were subsequently analysed for the rivers’ dissolved and sediment loads.

In the 1960s and 1970s Dick also undertook numerous other African journeys, many undertaken with PhD students, to collect data on climate change, from extremely arid to wet conditions, which had taken place over the last 20,000 years. He travelled around the Kalahari with Andrew Goudie in a two-wheel drive Chevrolet truck, in which they examined ancient shorelines and dunes associated with Lake Mkadikgadi, another to Lake Chew Bahir (a.k.a. Stefanie) with Andrew Goudie and Gerry Dekker in southern Ethiopia in a converted Land Rover mobile bank, one to the Rift Valley lakes of Ethiopia with Alayne Street, and one to Malawi with Nick Lancaster. Early in 1980, as part of the commemoration of its 150th Anniversary, the Royal Geographical Society, jointly with the British Institute in Eastern Africa, sponsored an expedition to the area north-west of Lake Turkana. Dick Grove and Paul Harvey were members of this expedition, and their aim was to investigate evidence for changes in the level of Lake Turkana, which resulted from climatic changes, and to explore an ancient overflow channel which lies in the south-east corner of the Sudan.

Dick Grove in the Namib Sand Sea, 1967. Photo by Andrew Goudie

As regards his scientific findings, Dick played a pivotal role in desert geomorphology through his field work in areas like northern Nigeria, Tibesti, Ethiopia, and Botswana, through his prescient appreciation of the importance of climate change, and through stimulation of research by a generation of research students and their research students. In the 1950s there was no more than a handful of British geomorphologists and Quaternary scientists working on deserts. Dick’s influence helped to change that situation. His graduate students in turn had their own graduate students who followed in research areas that were largely based Dick’s ideas. In fact, there are now four generations of researchers who can trace their links back to him.

Dick made cutting-edge use of vertical air photographs of large tracts of Africa that became available after the Second World War. Air photography proved very useful to him in the recognition and mapping of relict dune fields in Nigeria, the Sudan, and in the Kalahari. Dick and his students, such as Andrew Warren, played a major role in establishing the significance of ancient sand seas (ergs) for establishing the existence of climate change on desert margins. They also demonstrated just how enormous climate change had been in tropical regions. These dune systems, which occur in areas with as much as 1000 mm per annum of precipitation, are today degraded and covered with savanna vegetation and also extensively cultivated. Their morphology, however, can be compared to that of large, active and largely vegetation-free dunes in, say, Libya or the Namib Sand Sea.

Dick worked on two ancient mega lakes in Africa: Chad and Mgkadikgadi.  He also visited the Ethiopian lakes. His studies demonstrated that many basins had particularly high stands during the period that spanned the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM), between about 25,000 and 10, 000 years ago. Working in the East African Rift Valley in Ethiopia Dick also established that many high lake stands occurred in the early Holocene. He was one of the people who demolished the venerable and simplistic idea that glacial phases in lower latitudes were wet and that interglacials were dry.

In the 1970s, when international attention was focused on the African Sahel by the tragedy of famine in the drought years of the early 1970s, Dick’s understanding of long-term climate change – over centuries and Millennia – enabled him to offer a science-based understanding of the field of ‘desertification’. His work challenged glib Malthusian arguments about bio-geo-physical feedback, and simplistic assumptions about people causing ‘desert spreading’ through local actions.   His patient studies of Quaternary climatic change found a new and important audience in policy-makers.   It is one that has only grown as awareness of the complex spatial interconnections between greenhouse gases, atmospheric circulation temperature and rainfall began to grow in the 1990s and 2000s.  His work, and his commitment to fieldwork, remain important today, especially now that so much understanding of climate change derives from computer models.

In Dick’s day, Cambridge was a good place to undertake Quaternary research, because almost uniquely in the UK at that time, there was a highly active Quaternary group that included, Sir Harry Goodwin, Richard West, Roy Switsur, Bruce Sparks and Sir Nick Shackleton. Grove’s African surveys brought a global dimension to European interests in former glacial and interglacial environments.

Dick Grove by an ancient spit and stromatolite bed at Lake Chew Bahir. Photo by Andrew Goudie

The mobile bank on its way from Chew Bahir. Photo by Andrew Goudie

Dick Grove cutting cypress samples for dendrochronology, Angathopi, Sphakia, Crete 1989. Photo by Oliver Rackham

Later in his career, Dick moved from this initial interest in the climatological and Quaternary history of Africa to a much wider interest in the regional environmental histories of Africa, the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. This was a period that saw the emergence of environmental history as a proper discipline. Beginning in 1988, Dick directed with N.S. Margaris the EEC funded project ‘Desertification of the Aegean Islands’. This project introduced Dick to Oliver Rackham, initiating a collaboration and friendship that enriched the last 30 years of his research.

His classic study with Oliver Rackham, The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History (2001), focused on the complex interplay between the environment and the peoples of the Mediterranean from the earliest times to the present. In it, the authors covered key events in the making of the region’s environmental histories and surveyed many of the environmental impacts that resulted from political and economic developments. The Nature of Mediterranean Europe not only brought together the classical training and ecological history skills of Rackham but also insightfully drew out Dick’s climatological interests. Both the authors were, in fact, much influenced by the 1988 publication of The Little Ice Age by Grove’s first wife Jean and her ongoing research for a second edition.

The Nature of Mediterranean Europe has a very broad scope, both geographically and temporally.  It considers whether the Mediterranean landscape is a ruined one, explores the history of the desertification concept in the context of the area, outlines the main factors involved in the production of the landscape (climate, mountain building, flora, and human history) and explores the evidence for climate change (as, for example, during the Little Ice Age) and vegetation modification.  It also deals with the origins of Mediterranean savannas and badlands, the role of fire, and the nature and rates of erosion.

Shortly after the publication of this ground-breaking book, Jean Grove died. Dick spend the next three years completing the book she left unfinished, Little Ice Ages, Ancient and Modern (2 volumes), which was published in 2004.

Dick’s publishing career started in 1951 and extended over more than six decades. It comprised both books and papers. It included more than a dozen papers in the Geographical Journal. His text on Africa South of the Sahara in 1967 was a full survey of all aspects of African Geography and was in part based on observations he had undertaken in 1961 on a visit to Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.

The range of topics upon which he wrote was very broad, and besides those dealing with African climate change and geomorphology, included papers on land use, erosion and population in Nigeria, pebble movement by wind on icy surfaces, a mudflow on Bredon Hill, flooding on the East Anglian coast, the nature of the mouth of the River Spey, agricultural terracing in Africa south of the Sahara, irrigation in the Valais, the Little Ice Age, the landscape of Crete, and, finally in 2015, on St Helena.

Dick was the subject of two festschrift volumes. The first was a book edited by Bill Adams, Andrew Goudie and Tony Orme – The Physical Geography of Africa, Oxford University Press, 1996. This contains a wonderful appreciation of Dick Grove by Claudio Vita-Finzi. The second was a book edited by Max Martin, Vinita Damodaran, and Rohan D’Souza – Geography in Britain after World War II, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. This contains, inter alia, a chapter of reminiscences by Dick himself, together with a substantial bibliography.

Grove, though a somewhat diffident lecturer, was a very conscientious and stimulating tutor. He and Jean organized field trips for undergraduates, notably to the Valais of Switzerland. He was also a successful and supportive, rather than overly prescriptive, graduate supervisor. He supervised a number of graduate students who worked in Africa and often accompanied them on their fieldwork. These included: Claudio Vita-Finzi who pursued the alluvial history of the Mediterranean valleys, especially in Libya; Andrew Warren, who worked on the ancient dunes of Kordofan in Sudan; Celia Washbourn who investigated lake history in East Africa; Andrew Goudie, who studied calcrete in southern Africa; Mike Meadows who established the history of vegetation change in Malawi; Nick Lancaster who examined the geomorphology of the Kalahari; Alayne Street-Perrott who developed lake histories from the Ethiopian Rift; C.P.D. Harvey who wrote about the history of the Nile; Bill Adams, who studied the socio-economic impacts of the Bakolori Dam in Nigeria; Francine Hughes, who studied the ecological impacts of dams on floodplain forests in the Tana River in Kenya; Are Kolawole, who studied irrigation around lake Chad in Nigeria;  Harriet Allen who worked on vegetation change in Greece; and Gloria Pungetti, who worked on Mediterranean wetlands.

Beyond his academic interests and achievements, Dick was a loyal friend and keen observer — often privately amused at what was going on around him. He was a dedicated family man. He and Jean Clark Grove had six children: Richard, Jane, Lucy, Bill, Alison and Jonny. Their house in Cambridge was an open place, where people came and met and talked. From young school friends of their children to students who needed a place of refuge in crisis, they welcomed people into their home. Some stayed for a long time. They instilled a deep love of the out-of-doors and respect for Nature in all their children, taking them to far flung and remote locations for vacations that doubled as field research. All survive him except for Richard, a pioneering environmental historian, who died in 2020. Dick was also a proud grandfather and great-grandfather. Jean’s unexpected death in 2001was a terrible blow.

Dick searching for Pleistocene volcanic ash on Anafi, Greece, 30^th May 2014. Photo by Jenny Moody

In 2009 Dick married Ann Round, who survives him. They were devoted companions for 14 years and shared many interests — gardening, history, art, nature, a talent for painting and a tremendous sense of adventure and curiosity. For example, in celebration of his 90^th birthday and accompanied by friends, Dick drove Ann round the remote and mountainous island of Anafi, Greece, searching for ash deposits from the Pleistocene eruption of Santorini.

Dick was a true Geographer of very wide interests. His work was soundly based on the cores of the discipline – place, region, landscape, environment and humans. He was a modest individual with strong adherence to his Catholic faith, who had a profound influence on science and on individuals, who believed in fieldwork, was highly collegial, could read a landscape like no other person, and was an intrepid scientific explorer (not that he would brag about that).

Andrew Goudie
Oxford
July 2023

I am grateful for inputs from Bill Adams, Tom Spencer, Heather Viles, Jenny Moody and Andrew Powell.

Publications

(Modified and expanded from M. Martin, V. Damodaran, and R. D’Souza  (eds) – Geography in Britain after World War II, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.)

• Grove, 1951, Soil erosion and population problems in south-east Nigeria. Geographical Journal 117: 291–306.
• Grove, 1951, Land use and soil conservation in parts of Onitsha and Owerri Provinces. Geological Survey of Nigeria, Bulletin No. 21, p. 79.
• Grove, 1952, Land use and soil conservation on the Jos Plateau. Geological Survey of Nigeria, Bulletin No. 22, p. 63.
• Grove, 1952, Land and population in Katsina Province, with special reference to Bindawa village in Dan Yusufu district. Department of Agriculture, Government Printer, Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, p. 57.
• T. Grove and B.W. Sparks, 1952, Le déplacement des galets par la vent sur la glace. Revue de Géomorphologie Dynamique 1: 37-39.
• T. Grove, 1953, Account of a mudflow on Bredon Hill, Worcestershire, April 1951. Proceedings of the Geological Association 64: 10–13.
• Grove, 1953, IV – The sea flood on the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk. Geography 38: 164–170.
• A. Steers and A.T. Grove, 1954, Shoreline changes on the marshland coast of North Norfolk, 1951–53. Transactions Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society17: 322-326.
• Grove, 1955, The mouth of the Spey. Scottish Geographical Magazine 71: 104–107.
• Grove, 1956, Soil erosion in Nigeria. In: R. W. Steel and C. A. Fisher (eds.), Geographical Essays on British Tropical Lands, George Philip and Son, London, pp. 79–111.
• Grove, 1957, Patterned ground in Northern Nigeria. Geographical Journal 123: 271–274.
• Grove, 1957, The Benue Valley. Ministry of Natural Resources, Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, p. 94.
• Grove, 1958, The ancient erg of Hausaland and similar formations on the south side of the Sahara. Geographical Journal 124: 528–533
• Grove, 1959, A note on the former extent of lake Chad. Geographical Journal 125: 465–467.
• Grove, 1959, Farming systems and erosion on some soils in Southeastern Nigeria. Du Belge XL (3 & 4): 2150–2155.
• Grove, 1960, Geomorphology of the Tibesti region. Geographical Journal 126: 18–31.
• R.V. Prescott, H.P. White, and A.T. Grove, 1960, Sand formations in the Niger Valley between Niamey and Bourem.  Geographical Journal126(2): 200-203.
• Grove, 1961, Climate, in Norwich and its Region. British Association for the Advancement of Science, Norwich meeting, 42–43.
• W. Sparks and A. T. Grove, 1961, Some Quaternary fossil non-marine mollusca from the central Sahara. Journal of the Linnean Society of London, pp. 355–364.
• Grove, 1962, Fenland. In: J. B. Mitchell (ed.), Great Britain: Geographical Essays, Cambridge University Press, pp. 104–122.
• T. Grove and R. A. Pullan, 1963, Some aspects of the Pleistocene palaeogeography of the Chad basin. In: F. C. Howell & E. Bourliere (eds.), African ecology and human evolution. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 36:230–245. London: Methuen.
• Grove, 1964, Lake Chad. Geographical Magazine 37: 524–537.
• Sparks and A. T. Grove, 1964, Fossil non-marine mollusca from Mongonu, north-east Nigeria. Overseas Geology and Mineral Resources 9 (2): 190–195.
• T. Grove, 1967, Africa South of the Sahara. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 273.
• Grove and A. Warren, 1968, Quaternary landforms and climate on the south side of the Sahara. Geographical Journal 127: 204–208.
• Grove, 1969, Landforms and climatic change in the Kalahari and Ngamiland. Geographical Journal 135: 191–212.
• Grove, 1970, Two rivers, the Senegal and the Niger. Geographical Magazine 42: 362–367.
• Grove, 1970, Rise and fall of Lake Chad. Geographical Magazine 42: 432–439.
• Grove, 1970, Africa, Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 337.
• Grove and A. S. Goudie, 1971, Late Quaternary lake levels in the rift valley of southern Ethiopia and elsewhere in tropical Africa. Nature 234: 493–495.
• T. Grove and A.S. Goudie, 1971, Secrets of Lake Stefanie’s past. Geographical Magazine 43: 542-547.
• Grove, 1972, Climatic change in Africa in the last 20,000 years. I.G.U Colloque, Ouargla (1971); les problèmes de developpement du Sahara septentrional, Vol. II. Inst.de Geogr., Alger.
• Grove, 1972, The dissolved and solid load carried by the some West African rivers: Senegal, Niger, Benue and Shari. Journal of Hydrology 16: 277–300.
• Grove, 1972, A note on the remarkably low rainfall of the Sudan zone in 1913. Savanna 2: 191–212.
• Grove, 1973, Desertification in the African environment. In: D. Dalby and R. J. Harrison Church (eds.), Drought in Africa. SOAS, Centre for African Studies, London, pp. 33–45, 117–119.
• Grove, F. A. Street, and A. S. Goudie, 1975, Former lake levels and climatic change in the rift valley of southern Ethiopia. Geographical Journal 141: 177–202.
• Grove, 1975, A geographical introduction to the Sahel. Geographical Journal 144: 407-415.
• A. Street and A.T. Grove, 1976, Environmental and climatic implications of late Quaternary lake-level fluctuations in Africa. Nature 261: 385-390.
• T. Grove, 1977, Desertification. Progress in Physical Geography 1: 296-310.
• Grove, 1977, The geography of semi-arid lands. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 278: 457–475.
• Grove, 1978, Late Quaternary climatic change and the conditions for current erosion in Africa. Geo-Eco-Trop 2: 291–300.
• Grove, 1978, Geographical introduction to the Sahel. Geographical Journal 144: 407–415.
• Grove, 1978, Africa, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford p. 337.
• A. Street and A. T. Grove, 1979, Global maps of lake-level fluctuations since 30,000 B.P,. Quaternary Research 12: 83–118.
• T. Grove, 1979, Desertification: Natural or Man-Induced. In: Proceedings Symposium on Drought in Botswana June 5-8, 1978, Gaborone. Published by the Botswana Society in collaboration with Clark University Press: 71-74.
• Grove and F. M. G. Klein, 1979, Rural Africa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 122.
• Grove, 1980, Geomorphic evolution of the Sahara and the Nile. In: M. A. J. Williams and H. Faure (eds.), The Sahara and the Nile. Balkema, Rotterdam, pp. 7–16.
• T. Grove, 1980, Climatic classification: concepts for dry tropical environments. In: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics: Climatic classification: a consultants’ meeting, 14-16 April 1980, 1-5.
• Grove, 1981, The climate of the Sahara in the period of meteorological records. In: Allan, J. A. (ed.), Sahara, ecological change and early economic history. Menas Press Ltd., London.
• D. Harvey and A. T. Grove, 1982, A prehistoric source of the Nile. Geographical Journal 148: 327–336.
• Grove, 1983, Evolution of the physical geography of the East African rift valley region. In: E. W. Sims, J. H. Price, P. E. S. Whalley (Eds.), Evolution, time and space: The emergence of the biosphere. Academic Press, London, pp. 115–155.
• M. Adams and A. T. Grove, 1984, Irrigation and tropical Africa: Problems and problem solving. African Monographs 3: Cambridge University African Studies Centre.
• Grove, 1984, Changing climate, changing biomass and changing atmospheric CO₂. Progress in Biometeorology 3: 5–10.
• Grove (ed.), 1985, The Niger and it neighbours, Environmental history and hydrobiology, human use and health hazards of the major West African rivers. A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
• Grove, 1986, The state of Africa in the 1980s. Geographical Journal 152: 193–203.
• T. Grove, 1986, Desertification in southern Europe. Climatic Change9: 49-57.
• T. Grove, 1986, Geomorphology of the African Rift system. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 25(1): 9-16.
• Grove, 1986, The scale factor in relation to the processes involved in “desertification” in Europe. In: R. Fantechi and N. S. Margaris (eds.). Desertification in Europe. Proceedings of the Information Symposium in the EEC Programme on Climatology, held in Mytilene, Greece, 15–18 April 1984. Reidel: Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster, Tokyo.
• M. Adams and A. T. Grove, 1987, The implications of climatic variability for river regulation. In: J. Seeley and W. M. Adams (eds.), Environmental Issues in African Development Planning, Cambridge African Monographs No. 9, African Studies Centre, Cambridge, pp. 5–17.
• Grove and A. Kolawole, 1987, Lake Level Fluctuations in Tropical Africa with Special Reference to Lake Chad. In: N.M. Gadzama (ed.) Water Resources of the Lake Chad Basin: Management and Conservation. Proceedings of an International Seminar Held on 3rd-5th June, 1987 at N’Djamena, Chad. Evans Brothers, Ibadan.
• Grove, 1989, The Changing Geography of Africa, 2nd edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 240.
• Grove and J. E. G. Sutton, 1989, Agricultural terracing south of the Sahara. Azania 24: 114–122.
• Grove and J. M. Grove, 1990, Traditional montane irrigation systems in modern Europe: An example from Valais, Switzerland. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 33: 181–186.
• Moody and A. T. Grove, 1990, Terraces and enclosure walls in the Cretan landscape. In: S. Bottema, G. Entjes-Nieborg, and W. Van Zeist (eds.), Man’s role in the shaping of the Eastern Mediterranean landscape. A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
• Grove, J. Moody, and O. Rackham, 1991, Crete and the South Aegean Islands: effects of changing climate on the environment. (Final report for the European Community research project, contract number EV4C-0073-UK.
• Grove, 1991, The African Environment. In: D. Rimmer (ed.) Africa 30 years on. London: Royal African Society in association with James Currey and Heinemann, Portsmouth, N. H. pp. 39–55.
• M. Grove and A. T. Grove, 1992, Little Ice Age climates in the eastern Mediterranean. In: B. Frenzel (ed.), European climate reconstructed from documentary data: methods and results. Palaeoclimate Research 7: 45–50.
• M. Grove, A. T. Grove, and A. Conterio, 1992, Little Ice Age climate in the eastern Mediterranean. In: T. Mikami (ed.), Proceedings of the international symposium on the Little Ice Age climate, Department of Geography, Tokyo Metropolitan University, pp. 221–222.
• Grove, 1993, Africa’s climate in the Holocene. In: T. Shaw, P. Sinclair, B. Andah and A. Okpoko, (eds.), The Archaeology of Africa. Routledge, London, pp. 32–42.
• Grove and O. Rackham, 1993, Threatened landscapes in the Mediterranean: Examples from Crete. Landscape and Urban Planning 24: 279–292.
• Grove, 1996, African river discharges and lake levels in the Twentieth Century. In: T. C. Johnson and E. O. Odada (eds.), The Limnology, Climatology and Palaeoclimatology of the East African Lakes. Gordon and Breach, pp. 95–103.
• Grove, 1996, The historical context before 1850. In: C.J. Brandt and J. B. Thornes (eds.), Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, pp. 13–28.
• Grove, 1997, Classics in physical geography revisited. Progress in Physical Geography 21: 251–256.
• T. Grove, 1997, Pleistocene and Holocene Climates and Vegetation Zones. In: Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa. J. O. Vogel, (ed.) pp.35-39
• Grove and O. Rackham, 1998, History of Mediterranean land use. In: P. Mairota, J. B. Thornes, and N. Geeson (eds.), Atlas of Mediterranean Environments in Europe: The Desertification Context. Wiley, Chichester.
• Grove, 1998, Variability of African river discharges and lake levels. In: G. Demareee, J. Alexandre, and M. de Dapper (eds.), Tropical Climatology, Meteorology and Hydrology in Memoriam Franz Bultot (1924–1995). Brussels, pp. 470–478.
• Grove, I. Ispikoudis, M. Karteris, A. Kazaklis, J. A. Moody, V. P. Papanastasis and O. Rackham, 1999, Threatened Mediterranean Landscapes of Western Crete: Research results and policy implications. Vol. 1. Proceedings of the International Conference, 1996, Crete. EUR 19303.
• Grove, 2000, The African environment. In D. Rimmer and A. Kirk-Greene (eds.), The British Intellectual Engagement with Africa in the Twentieth Century. Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 179–206.
• Grove, 2000, Gavdhos as a threatened valued landscape. In Mediterranean Desertification: research results and policy implications, Vol. 2, Summary of project results, EUR 19303: Energy, Environment and Sustainable Developments.
• Grove, J. Moody, and O. Rackham, 2001, Gavdhos, Crete. In: B. Green and W. Vos, (eds.), Threatened landscapes: Conserving cultural environments. Spon Press, London.
• Grove and O Rackham, 2001, The nature of Mediterranean Europe: An ecological history. Yale University Press, p. 384.
• E. Nichol and A. T. Grove, 2001, Thermal satellite images and boundary layer structures in desert marginal areas. Geophysical Research Letters 28:
• 2943–2946.
• Grove, 2001, The “Little Ice Age” and its geomorphological consequences in Mediterranean Europe. Climate Change 48: 121-136.
• Grove, 2004, Edited, Jean Grove, 2004, Little Ice Ages Ancient and Modern. 2 vols. Routledge, London.
• Grove, 2008, A brief consideration of climate forcing factors in view of the Holocene glacier record. Global and Planetary Change 60: 141–147.
• Grove, 2008, The revolution in palaeoclimatology around 1970. In: T. P. Burt, R. J. Chorley, D. Brunsden, N. J. Cox, and A. S. Goudie (eds.), The History of the Study of Landforms, Vol. 4. Geological Society of London, 961–1004.
• N. Munro, J. Deckers, Mitiku Haile, A. T. Grove, J. Poesen, and J. Nyssen, 2008, Soil landscapes, land cover change and erosion features of the Central Plateau region of Tigrai, Ethiopia: Photo-monitoring with an interval of 30 years. Catena 75 (1): 55–64.
• Grove and E. Lopez-Gunn, 2010, Uncertainty in climate change. Real Instituto Elcano working paper, Madrid, Spain.
• Cohen, B. Van Bocxlaer, J. A. Todd, M. McGlue, E. Michel, H. H. Nkotagu, A.T. Grove, and D. Delvaux, 2013, Quaternary ostracods and molluscs from the Rukwa Basin (Tanzania) and their evolutionary and paleobiogeographic implications. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 392: 79–97.
• Grove, 2015, St Helena as a Microcosm of the East India Company. In: V. Damodaran, A. Winterbottom, and A. Lester (eds.), The East India Company and the Natural World. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History, pp. 249–269.