Search results for "VEGETATION HISTORY"
showing 8 items of 8 documents
Zur Geschichte der nacheiszeitlichen Umwelt und der Kulturpflanzen im Land Brandenburg
2018
International audience; The results of pollenanalytical and archaeobotanical studies presented here show the development of veg-etation in the state of Brandenburg, which was characterized by the climate and the associated natural spread of plants as well as the use of the resource forest by man.The plant food of humans was first obtained by gathering and, since the beginning of permanent settle-ment in the Neolithic period, mainly by means of agriculture. The cultivation of plants continued over the millennia, with most archaeological cultures showing their typical inventory of crops. The dynamics of these developments require further research, as there are still many spatial and temporal …
The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), version 2
2020
The Eurasian (née European) Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) was established in 2013 to provide a public database of high-quality modern pollen surface samples to help support studies of past climate, land cover, and land use using fossil pollen. The EMPD is part of, and complementary to, the European Pollen Database (EPD) which contains data on fossil pollen found in Late Quaternary sedimentary archives throughout the Eurasian region. The EPD is in turn part of the rapidly growing Neotoma database, which is now the primary home for global palaeoecological data. This paper describes version 2 of the EMPD in which the number of samples held in the database has been increased by 60% from 4826 to…
Paesaggio culturale dei sistemi tradizionali: l'olivo in Italia
2005
We used a new sedimentary record to reconstruct the Holocene vegetation and fire history of Gorgo Basso, a coastal lake in south-western Sicily (Italy). Pollen and charcoal data suggest a fire-prone open grassland near the site until ca 10,000 cal yr BP (8050 cal BC), when Pistacia shrubland expanded and fire activity declined, probably in response to increased moisture availability. Evergreen Olea europaea woods expanded ca 8400 to decline abruptly at 8200 cal yr BP, when climatic conditions became drier at other sites in the Mediterranean region. Around 7000 cal yr BP evergreen broadleaved forests (Quercus ilex, Quercus suber and O. europaeo) expanded at the cost of open communities. The …
Regional climate model simulations for Europe at 6 and 0.2 k BP: sensitivity to changes in anthropogenic deforestation
2014
International audience; This study aims to evaluate the direct effects of anthropogenic deforestation on simulated climate at two contrasting periods in the Holocene, ∼ 6 and ∼ 0.2 k BP in Eu-rope. We apply the Rossby Centre regional climate model RCA3, a regional climate model with 50 km spatial resolution, for both time periods, considering three alternative descriptions of the past vegetation: (i) potential natural vegetation (V) simulated by the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS, (ii) potential vegetation with anthro-pogenic land use (deforestation) from the HYDE3.1 (History Database of the Global Environment) scenario (V + H3.1), and (iii) potential vegetation with anthropogenic land …
The Impact of Climate, Resource Availability, Natural Disturbances and Human Subsistence Strategies on Sicilian Landscape Dynamics During the Holocene
2022
This paper presents a multidisciplinary summary of the most recent discoveries and hypotheses concerning factors driving the human subsistence economy and landscape shaping in Sicily during the Holocene. A number of scientific papers have recently pointed out the key role played by paleogeography, resource (water, food) availability and natural disturbances (volcanic eruptions, tsunamis) in local human activities. Modern anthropology and archaeology increasingly use biological remains (e.g. soils, bones, wood, plant macroremains, pollen) to better understand how human communities managed to survive and spread. Likewise, refined reconstructions of past human demographic fluxes and socio-econ…
1200-yr high-resolution terrestrial climate archive from the middle of the Mediterranean: The sedimentary record from Lake “Specchio di Venere” on Pa…
2011
The special location of Lake "Specchio di Venere" on Pantelleria Island in the Sicily Channel (Mediterranean Sea) between Tunisia and Sicily offers a unique terrestrial archive recording atmospheric changes, which are otherwise difficult to decipher in the marine records from this area. The lake is an endorheic saline basin with a maximum depth of 12.5 m. As the water input depends on rainfall, precipitation variations influence changes of the lake's water chemistry. In summer 2008, Lake Venere was cored with a modified Livingstone corer revealing a composite sedimentary sequence of 10.29 m length. Two radiocarbon dates form a preliminary age model indicating a very high sedimentation rate …
The ‘recent’ forests of Mount Venda (Padua, Italy): when historical cartography and archaeobotany tell quite a different story
2018
Forests, like agricultural systems and housing, are an integral part of the human landscapes. They evolve over time, not only in response to environmental factors (e.g. climate change) but also in response to developments in human society. This work on the analysis of forest dynamics in Euganean hills is the result of research carried out as part of the research programmes THISTLE (MSCA Fellowship, grant agreement: 656397) and MEMOLA (EU FP7 Project , grant agreement: 613265). The work is focused on two mountains in particular: Monte Venda and Monte della Madonna. The archaeobotanical investigations reveal the presence of ancient forests (since the 14th century) in these areas , although th…
1200 years of decadal-scale variability of Mediterranean vegetation and climate at Pantelleria Island, Italy.
2013
A new sedimentary sequence from Lago di Venere on Pantelleria Island, located in the Strait of Sicily between Tunisia and Sicily was recovered. The lake is located in the coastal infra-Mediterranean vegetation belt at 2 m a.s.l. Pollen, charcoal and sedimentological analyses are used to explore linkages among vegetation, fire and climate at a decadal scale over the past 1200 years. A dry period from ad 800 to 1000 that corresponds to the 'Medieval Warm Period' (WMP) is inferred from sedimentological analysis. The high content of carbonate recorded in this period suggests a dry phase, when the ratio of evaporation/precipitation was high. During this period the island was dominated by thermop…