Human impact during the Bronze Age on the vegetation at Lago Lucone (northern Italy)

Lake-sediment records were used to reconstruct human impact on the landscape around Lago Lucone (45°33′N, 10°29′E, 249ma.s.l.), a former lake in the western amphitheatre system of the Lago di Garda. Presence of prehistoric human populations is attested by pile-dwelling settlements from the Early-Middle Bronze Age, with one settlement at a distance of only 100m from the coring site. Pollen, plant-macrofossil and microscopic charcoal analyses were applied to a 250cm sediment core with four dates providing the time control. A mixed oak forest that was important during the Early-Middle Holocene was cleared and replaced by open vegetation during the Bronze Age (∼2000-1100 b.c.) when open lands were estimated to have covered more than 60% of the total relevant pollen-source area. During a phase of high human impact, independent climatic proxies suggest warm and dry climatic conditions. Later, ca. 1100 b.c., palaeobotanical evidence indicates a sharp decrease in human pressure in the Lago Lucone area. The comparison with other sedimentary palaeocultural records shows that the period 1300-1100 b.c. was characterised by general declines of agricultural activities both south and north of the Alps. These declines have been previously attributed to a change towards wetter and colder climatic conditions in and around the Alps. However, the decline in human impact around Lago Lucone cannot be exclusively attributed to climatic variation. Therefore other forcing factors independent of climatic changes, such as cultural crises or changes in spatial organisation of the habitats, cannot be ruled out under the present state of knowledg

Lateglacial and Holocene vegetation history in the Insubrian Southern Alps—New indications from a small-scale site

Fundamental uncertainties exist in the study region about the former lowland vegetation at local scales. All existing palaeoecological results are derived from sediments of medium- to large-sized sites (8-5000ha), which are thought to record mainly regional vegetation in their pollen content. Therefore the very small mire at Balladrum (0.05ha) was analysed for pollen, plant-macrofossils, and charcoal and the results compared with those of previous studies in the same region. Common regional signals were detected, but also new insights for the tree species Pinus cembra (L.), Abies alba (Mill.) and Castanea sativa (Mill.). Our palaeobotanical data reveal the local dominance of the timberline species P. cembra during the Lateglacial (16500-14250 cal b.p.) at low-altitudes. For A. alba an early presence in the area is suggested by pollen data, corroborating previous high-altitudinal studies indicating the presence of glacial refugia in the region. Occasional findings of C. sativa pollen throughout the Holocene may indicate the local but very rare presence of this species in the Insubrian Southern Alps, in contrast to the conventional opinion that C. sativa was introduced during the Roman Period. Altogether the results confirm the need of multiproxy palaeobotanical records from basins of variable size to assess the past composition of vegetation more accuratel

EFFICHRONIC study protocol: A non-controlled, multicentre European prospective study to measure the efficiency of a chronic disease self-management programme in socioeconomically vulnerable populations

Introduction More than 70% of world mortality is due to chronic conditions. Furthermore, it has been proven that social determinants have an enormous impact on both health-related behaviour and on the received attention from healthcare services. These determinants cause h

The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), version 2

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 8134. Much of the improvement in data coverage has come from northern Asia, and the database has consequently been renamed the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database to reflect this geographical enlargement. The EMPD can be viewed online using a dedicated map-based viewer at https://empd2.github.io and downloaded in a variety of file formats at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909130 (Chevalier et al., 2019)Swiss National Science Foundation | Ref. 200021_16959

The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), version 2

The Eurasian (nee 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 8134. Much of the improvement in data coverage has come from northern Asia, and the database has consequently been renamed the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database to reflect this geographical enlargement. The EMPD can be viewed online using a dedicated map-based viewer at https://empd2.github.io and downloaded in a variety of file formats at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909130 (Chevalier et al., 2019).Peer reviewe

The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), version 2

Abstract. 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 8134. Much of the improvement in data coverage has come from northern Asia, and the database has consequently been renamed the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database to reflect this geographical enlargement. The EMPD can be viewed online using a dedicated map-based viewer at https://empd2.github.io and downloaded in a variety of file formats at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909130 (Chevalier et al., 2019).</jats:p

Pollen data from surface-sediment samples from 92 lakes in Italy

Aim and Location: Our aim is to develop pollen-climate inference models for southern Europe and to test their performance and inference power by cross-validation with modern climate data. Surface sediments collected from lakes along a climate gradient from the winter-cold/summer-wet Alps to winter-wet/summer-dry Sicily were analysed for modern pollen assemblages. Methods: For each lake, mean monthly temperatures, seasonal precipitation and site-specific climate uncertainties have been estimated. Pollen-climate relationships were studied using numerical analyses, and inference models were derived by partial least squares (PLS) and weighted-averaging PLS (WA-PLS) regressions for January and July temperatures (T ), and for winter, spring and summer precipitation (P). In order to assess whether these variables are also of ecological importance for vegetation in the subregions, we split the data set into an Alpine and a Mediterranean subset. Results: Low bootstrap cross-validated root mean square errors of prediction (RMSEP) for January T (1.7 °C), July T (2.1 °C) and summer P (38 mm), as well as low RMSEPs expressed as a percentage of the gradient length (8 -9%), indicate a good inference power. Models revealed excellent to good performance statistics for January T, July T and summer P (r2 = 0.8), and for winter and spring P (r 2 = c. 0.5). We show that the variables with the highest explanatory power differ between the two subregions. These are summer T and P for the Alpine set, and January T, winter P and July T for the Mediterranean set. Main conclusions: The study reveals the influence of climatic conditions during the growing season on modern pollen assemblages and indicates the potential of pollen data for long-term climate reconstructions of parameters such as winter precipitation and temperature, which seem to be the main factors having an influence on the variability of Mediterranean climate. These models may therefore provide important information on past regional climate variability in southern Europe

Holocene vegetation and fire dynamics at Crveni Potok, a small mire in the Dinaric Alps (Tara National Park, Serbia)

International audienc