This study examines sediments from Deep Creek Lake (DCL) to reconstruct the past vegetation, climate and disturbance regimes for the area. DCL is located on Thousand Lakes Mountain in southern Utah. This high-elevation lake (approximately 3,200 meters) will provide a local record of environmental change for most of the Holocene. The lake core from this site produces a 9,000-year-old record...
Mongolia presents a great variety of landscapes and climate, depending on the altitude which differs between the boreal forests of mountainous regions of the Altai in the Northwest and the steppe regions of Central Mongolia. The vegetation and fire dynamics have been impacted by both climate and human activities, which have been present there since the Upper Palaeolithic (46000 - 12000 cal. yr...
The timings and extent of anthropogenic impacts in the Indian Himalayas are poorly characterized, ambiguous and difficult to determine. In present study, we investigated the compositional variation, concentration, and temporal trend in the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and fecal biomarker (coprostanol and epi-coprostanol) from the lake sediment core in the central Himalayas to...
Forest fires in the Siberian Arctic get larger, hotter and the fire season gets longer, which raises concerns if these fires might lead to biome shifts from tundra to summergreen or evergreen boreal forest – with consequences for regional to global biophysical land properties and biogeochemical cycles. Given the short time span of instrumental observations, it is unknown if fire can initiate...
Fire chronicles and the influence of climatic and anthropogenic factors on regional fire dynamics in the context of global climate change represent a great research interest in recent years. In our DFG supported project “Plant and land use of Early Iron Age societies in the boreal zone of the mid-Kama region and its environmental impact” we focus on the history of economic development in the...
The spread of a sedentary lifestyle and agricultural economy during Neolithic period, is considered a turning point for human impact on the environment in Central Europe. Early Neolithic (late 6th mill. – early 4th mill. BC) settlement in Silesia (SW Poland) was limited to areas with a loess-derived soil cover, where the landscape was transformed by vegetation clearance and establishment of a...
The paleofire dynamics in Russia of have been poorly studied to date, especially for the vast area of Siberia. The paper presents new results of a study of the Oshukovskoye peatbog, located in the Turo-Pyshminsky interfluve in the subtaiga zone of Western Siberia. In 3.7 m core macroscopic particles of charcoal in peat was count in each 2 sm, on the basis of which the patterns of changes in...
Climate change is one of the most challenging problems facing humanity. Depending on climate conditions and vegetation composition, a fire regime changes threat previously relatively fire-free regions. East-European forest-steppe is an economically important ecotone between arid steppe and mesophilic forest. To assess the possible fire risks induced by the current climate warming we conducted...
In palaeoecology, multi-site macro-charcoal analyses provide information on climate-fire-vegetation linkages, their spatial and temporal extent as well as the impact of prehistoric human practices. Our multi-site study comprises 8 macro-charcoal records from two highly continental forest-steppe regions in Western and North-Central Mongolia covering the Holocene. In addition to reviewing...
