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1. Temperate semi-natural grasslands are characterized by high levels of species diversity and have a high conservation value. Plant species diversity in grazed semi-natural grasslands is known to be influenced by management intensity and habitat connectivity. Both grazing pressure and between-patch connectivity are expected to depend on the movement patterns of livestock in the landscape. 2. The
Measurements of Last Interglacial stable water isotopes in ice cores show that central Greenland delta O-18 increased by at least 3 parts per thousand compared to present day. Attempting to quantify the Greenland interglacial temperature change from these ice core measurements rests on our ability to interpret the stable water isotope content of Greenland snow. Current orbitally driven interglacia
The purpose of the INTIMATE project is to integrate palaeo-climate information from terrestrial, ice and marine records so that the timing of environmental response to climate forcing can be compared in both space and time. One of the key difficulties in doing this is the range of different methods of dating that can be used across different disciplines. For this reason, one of the main outputs of
In this paper we present new relative sea-level data from southern Greenland, a key area for understanding the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) response to climate change. Within fourteen lakes and marine lagoons from the inner part of Bredefjord (Nordre Sermilik) in southern Greenland, isolations revealed by stratigraphic and palaeoecological analyses are dated and relative sea levels reconstructed. Due
We present a synthesis of the results of a multiproxy, multisite, palaeoecological study of Holocene environmental change in Kamchatka, Far East Russia, details of which are presented elsewhere in the volume. We summarise the results of the analyses of pollen, diatom, chironomid, and testate amoebae assemblages, together with stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon, and sediment characteristics from
Questions: To what extent is species richness in semi-natural grasslands related to local environmental factors and (present/past) surrounding landscape structure? Do responses of species richness depend on degree of habitat specialization (specialists vs generalists) and/or scale of the study? Location: Öland, Sweden. Methods: Richness of herbaceous vascular plants (subdivided into richness of gr
Question To what extent do historical and present-day management regimes and landscape characteristics affect the functional structure of semi-natural grassland communities? Location Semi-natural grasslands, the Baltic island of Öland, Sweden. Methods We assessed community functional structure within 475 (50 cm × 50 cm) semi-natural grassland vegetation plots using two indices: community-weighte
Oxygen (delta O-18) and carbon (delta C-13) isotope records of calcitic carbonate components (Chara sp. algal encrustations and Bithynia tentaculata gastropod opercula) from a lake-sediment succession on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland, south-eastern Sweden, have been obtained to investigate regional climate dynamics during the Holocene. The hydrological sensitivity of the small lake, particularl
Changes in solar activity have previously been proposed to cause decadal- to millennial-scale fluctuations in both the modern and Holocene climates(1). Direct observational records of solar activity, such as sunspot numbers, exist for only the past few hundred years, so solar variability for earlier periods is typically reconstructed from measurements of cosmogenic radionuclides such as Be-10 and
The relationship between climatic variations, vegetation dynamics and early human activity between c. 4150-2860 BC was reconstructed from a high-resolution pollen and geochemical record obtained from a small lake located in County Sligo, Ireland. The proxy record suggests the existence of a woodland with a largely closed canopy at the start of the fourth millennium BC. Only minor human disturbance
The vegetation history of the Faroe Islands has been investigated in numerous studies all broadly showing that the early-Holocene vegetation of the islands largely consisted of fellfield with gravely and rocky soils formed under a continental climate which shifted to an oceanic climate around 10,000 cal yr BP when grasses, sedges and finally shrubs began to dominant the islands. Here we present da
The intensification of the hydrological cycle, with an observed and modeled increase in drought incidence and severity, underscores the need to quantify drought effects on carbon cycling and the terrestrial sink. FLUXNET, a global network of eddy covariance towers, provides dense data streams of meteorological data, and through flux partitioning and gap filling algorithms, estimates of net ecosyst
The relative complexity of the mechanisms underlying savanna ecosystem dynamics, in comparison to other biomes such as temperate and tropical forests, challenges the representation of such dynamics in ecosystem and Earth system models. A realistic representation of processes governing carbon allocation and phenology for the two defining elements of savanna vegetation (namely trees and grasses) may
High resolution palaeoenvironmental records in Far-Eastern Russia are rare, and the Kamchatka Peninsula is among the least studied areas of the region. This paper describes a record spanning the last ca. 11,000 yr, obtained from a bog in the southern part of Kamchatka. The radiocarbon dated core was analysed for pollen, testate amoebae, charcoal and loss-on-ignition (LOI). The vegetation during th
Here, we present results from the most comprehensive compilation of Holocene peat soil properties with associated carbon and nitrogen accumulation rates for northern peatlands. Our database consists of 268 peat cores from 215 sites located north of 45 degrees N. It encompasses regions within which peat carbon data have only recently become available, such as the West Siberia Lowlands, the Hudson B
A Holocene diatom stratigraphy of 2nd Pond, a small, filled pond on Nightingale Island (37 degrees 25 S, 12 degrees 29 W) was analyzed and interpreted to infer paleolimnological changes on Tristan da Cunha, South Atlantic. The diatom assemblage of 2nd Pond has the character of an acidic, oligotrophic wetland and the diatom record suggests that 2nd Pond most likely has been a bog/wetland throughout
We present here surface water vapor isotopic measurements conducted from June to August 2010 at the NEEM (North Greenland Eemian Drilling Project) camp, NW Greenland (77.45 degrees N, 51.05 degrees W, 2484 m a.s.l.). Measurements were conducted at 9 different heights from 0.1m to 13.5m above the snow surface using two different types of cavity-enhanced near-infrared absorption spectroscopy analyze
Sedimentary records of invertebrate assemblages were obtained from a small lake in the Khibiny Mountains, Kola Peninsula. Together with a quantitative chironomid-based reconstruction of mean July air temperature, these data provide evidence of Holocene climate variability in the western sector of the Russian Subarctic. The results suggest that the amplitude of climate change was more pronounced in
We studied bacterial and fungal colonization of submerged plant litter, using a known Si-accumulator (Equisetum arvense), in experimental microcosms during one month. We specifically addressed the microbial decomposer role concerning biogenic silica (bSiO2) dissolution from the degrading litter. To vary the rates and level of microbial colonization, the litter was combined with a range of mineral
Dendroclimatic investigations of subfossil Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) from two raised bogs in southern Sweden yielded a continuous floating 1492-year long tree-ring record. By cross-dating with bog-pine chronologies from Lower Saxony, Germany, the South Swedish record was assigned an absolute age of 5219-3728 BC. The cross-match between ring-width chronologies from these two regions, separated
