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Publications
Publications (114)
River deltas ofer numerous ecosystem services and host an estimated global population of 350 million to more than 500 million inhabitants in over 100 countries. To maintain their sustainability into the future, deltas need to withstand sea-level rise from global warming, but human pressures and diminishing sediment supplies are exacerbating their v...
Although the construction of the Giza necropolis necessitated the creation of an extensive array of metal tools, the significance of these early instances of metallurgy, and the contamination they left, has been overlooked in favor of understanding pyramid building techniques. We geochemically analyzed a sediment core from the Khufu harbor, on the...
Venice Lagoon (Italy), the largest wetland in the Mediterranean basin, is extremely vulnerable to variations in relative sea level (RSL) which is locally de ned by an average rising rate of about 2.5 mm per year, resulting from both sea-level change and vertical land movements. The environmental pressures stemming from projected higher RSL rising r...
This article describes the location and sedimentary environments of the Khufu harbour in Giza, Egypt, with the aim of reconstructing its palaeoenvironmental evolution during the Old Kingdom (2686–2160 BCE). We use chronostratigraphy and sedimentology to elucidate the site’s Holocene sedimentary units and compare and contrast the results with previo...
The Mediterranean Basin is an environmental change hotspot that, relative to other regions of the world, is forecasted to experience a significant shift in biodiversity due to multiple factors such as climate change and agricultural intensification. Within this framework, the Eastern Mediterranean region is projected to face a temperature rise of ~...
While the exact technical processes employed in the construction of the pyramids are still a subject of ongoing debate, it is widely recognized that the Giza Plateau served as a hub where various trades converged with the common objective of building the necropolis. Of particular importance was the development of a local and sustainable food supply...
New high-resolution relative sea-level (RSL) proxy data obtained from Lithophyllum rims in the Adriatic allow us
to distinguish major local, regional and global RSL driving processes during the past two millennia. RSL change
on the Elafiti islands in the Dubrovnik archipelago (Southern Adriatic) has been significantly affected by local
tectonic con...
The olive tree (Olea europaea L.) is one of the species best adapted to a Mediterranean-type climate. Nonetheless, the Mediterranean Basin is deemed to be a climate change ‘hotspot’ by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change because future model projections suggest considerable warming and drying. Within this context, new environmental challe...
We present a historical record of landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs, 85 events) over the Mascarene Islands (southern Indian Ocean) since the 17th century to evaluate interannual-to-decadal-scale changes in past TC variability, from the cooler Little Ice Age (LIA) to the present warming world, and to contextualize present and future changes in risk...
The pyramids of Giza originally overlooked a now defunct arm of the Nile. This fluvial channel, the Khufu branch, enabled navigation to the Pyramid Harbor complex but its precise environmental history is unclear. To fill this knowledge gap, we use pollen-derived vegetation patterns to reconstruct 8,000 y of fluvial variations on the Giza floodplain...
The fluvial harbour of Aquileia (Italy), one of the most important Roman trading centres in the Mediterranean, was abandoned after the city's destruction in 452 AD. The deserted harbour evolved into a swamp surrounded by a floodplain that has recorded the anthropogenic, environmental and climatic pressures that have occurred during the last 1500 ye...
The Mediterranean is facing numerous socio-environmental challenges linked to global change, frequently compounded by rapid population growth. Within this framework, regional-scale Holocene temperature reconstructions are key to placing industrial-era warming into the perspective of natural climatic variability. Here, we present a new Mediterranean...
In the context of industrial-era global change, Mediterranean coastal areas are threatened by relative sea level (RSL) rise. Shifts in the drivers of coastal dynamics are forecasted to trigger changes in the frequency of flooding of low-lying areas, with significant effects on marine-coastal environments, societies, economy and urban systems. Here,...
Future warming in the Mediterranean is expected to significantly exceed global values with unpredictable implications on the sea-level rise rates in the coming decades. Here, we apply an empirical-Bayesian spatio-temporal statistical model to a dataset of 401 sea-level index points from the central and western Mediterranean and reconstruct rates of...
Imprint: Sidestone Press Academics Layout & cover design: Sidestone Press Photograph cover: • Main image: Mazotos shipwreck, Cyprus (photo: Al. Erdozain © MARELab) • Inset: Mandirac 1 near Narbonne France (photo: C. Durand, CNRS, UMR 7299-CCJ) • Inset: Ma'agan Mikhael II before being launched in Haifa, Israel (photo: A. Efremov) ISBN 978-90-8890-94...
One of the most devastating environmental consequences of war is the disruption of peacetime human–microbe relationships, leading to outbreaks of infectious diseases. Indirectly, conflicts also have severe health consequences due to population displacements, with a heightened risk of disease transmission. While previous research suggests that confl...
Industrial-era warming and aridification have underlined the importance of past climate reconstructions in contextualizing present-day anomalies from a long-term perspective. While the issue of climate change is global, studies have long stressed the vulnerability of the Mediterranean basin, especially with regard to its islands with likely acute e...
The history of the Eastern Mediterranean is punctuated by major crises that have influenced many of the region's established socioeconomic models. Recent studies have underscored the role of drought and temperature oscillations in driving changes but attempts to quantify their magnitude remain equivocal, hindering long-term assessments of the poten...
In Eastern Mediterranean history, 1200 BCE is a symbolic date. Its significance is tied to the important upheavals that destabilised regional-scale economic systems, leading to the dislocation of mighty Empires and, finally, to the “demise” of a societal model (termed “the Crisis Years”). Recent studies have suggested that a centuries-long drought,...
Mediterranean deltaic-coastal plains represent relatively underexplored depositional archives that record the Holocene response of vegetation and depositional systems to high-frequency climate changes. In this study, we examine a 25 m-thick succession of Holocene age (core EM2) recovered in the innermost portion of the Po delta plain of northern It...
Morocco is an area subject to recurrent severe droughts, desertification and an increasing land degradation. It is within a Mediterranean hotspot of biodiversity as it harbors many threatened endemic species such as the argan tree (Argania spinosa). In this context, past climate records are needed to analyze the impact of climate variability on the...
Can climate affect societies? This question, of both past and present importance, is encapsulated by the major socioeconomic crisis that affected the Mediterranean 3200 yr ago. The demise of the core civilizations of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age (Dark Ages) is still controversial because it...
This paper explores long-term trends in human population and vegetation change in the Levant from the early to the late Holocene in order to assess when and how human impact has shaped the region’s landscapes over the millennia. To do so, we employed multiple proxies and compared archaeological, pollen and palaeoclimate data within a multi-scalar a...
Southern Anatolia is a highly significant area within the Mediterranean, particularly in terms of understanding how agriculture moved into Europe from neighbouring regions. This study uses pollen, palaeoclimate and archaeological evidence to investigate the relationships between demography and vegetation change, and to explore how the development o...
The Holocene colonisation of islands by humans has invariably led to deep-seated changes in landscape dynamics and ecology. In particular, burning was a management tool commonly used by prehistoric societies and it acted as a major driver of environmental change, particularly from the Neolithic onwards. To assess the role of early human impacts (e....
The Holocene colonisation of islands by humans has invariably led to deep-seated changes in landscape dynamics and ecology. In particular, burning was a management tool commonly used by prehistoric societies and it acted as a major driver of environmental change, particularly from the Neolithic onwards. To assess the role of early human impacts (e....
Guinea has very little ecological data available regarding its sacred forests. This study shows the important conservation role of these forests in a local context of strong human impacts. We present four representative case studies from the Sudano-Guinean zone in Upper Guinea. Our phytoecological inventories recorded a total of 431 species, 312 ge...
The 4.2 ka BP event is defined as a phase of environmental stress characterized by severe and prolonged drought of global extent. The event is recorded from the North Atlantic through Europe to Asia and has led scientists to evoke a 300-year global mega-drought. For the Mediterranean and the Near East, this abrupt climate episode radically altered...
The ancient harbour of Pisa, Portus Pisanus, was one of Italy's most influential seaports for many centuries. Nonetheless, very little is known about its oldest harbour and the relationships between environmental evolution and the main stages of harbour history. The port complex that ensured Pisa's position as an economic and maritime power progres...
The 4.2ka BP event is defined as a phase of environmental stress characterized by severe and prolonged drought of global extent. The event is recorded from the North Atlantic through Europe to Asia, leading scientists to evoke a 300-yr global mega-drought. Focusing on the Mediterranean and the Near East, this abrupt climate episode radically altere...
Global climate change has sharpened focus on the social and economic challenges associated with water deficits, particularly in regions where anthropogenic demands exceed supply. This modern condition was also experienced by the people of ancient western Asia, where chronic water shortages were accentuated by recurrent droughts. However, human soci...
From 2000 to 2015, tsunamis and storms killed more than 430,000 people worldwide and affected a further >530 million, with total damages exceeding US$970 billion. These alarming trends, underscored by the tragic events of the 2004 Indian Ocean catastrophe, have fueled increased worldwide demands for assessments of past, present, and future coastal...
River deltas began forming around 7000 years BP because of the stabilization of mean sea level and high sedimentary inputs at base-level. The natural variety of wetland environments on clastic coasts, in particular deltas, explains in major part the important disparities in harbour contexts. These different geomorphological contexts led to specific...
Oil, which sparked the first Gulf War, is not the only liquid resource that may trigger global crises from within a Middle Eastern theater. Water - or the lack of it - could be a cause of future conflicts because it is the most precious natural resource that can be manipulated and controlled by humans. Here, we report the written evidence for the d...
The temporal and spatial diffusion of early agriculture across Europe from the Fertile Crescent has been widely studied, but data from the Caucasian corridor are still rare. This study shows the first evidence for the cultivation of cereals and anthropogenic fires in southern Russia, between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea, 7000 years ago. It sugges...
Storm surges, leading to catastrophic coastal flooding, are amongst the most feared natural hazards due to the high population densities and economic importance of littoral areas. Using the Central Mediterranean Sea as a model system, we provide strong evidence for enhanced periods of storminess leading to coastal flooding during the last 4500 year...
This paper presents new data looking into the Holocene evolution of the Kuban delta (Taman Peninsula, SW Russia), with particular emphasis on its southern arm. In the area of the later Taman Peninsula, the Holocene marine transgression created an archipelago around 6000. years ago. When sea-level rise decelerated, deltaic sedimentation and longshor...
Since the late-nineteenth century, surface temperatures have increased worldwide but non-uniformly. The repercussions of this global warming in drylands, such as the Mediterranean, may become a major source of concern in the near future, as such warming is often accompanied by increased droughts, that will severely degrade water supply and quality....
One of the goals of climate scientists is to understand how climate shifts may have changed the course of history and influenced culture at millennial timescales. Repeatedly, environmental degradation has upset the balance between people, their habitat, and the socioeconomic frameworks in which they live. Among these imbalances, drought, firmly roo...
Debate on the complex coevolution that has shaped interactions between forested ecosystems and humans through constantly evolving land-use practices over the past millennia has long been centered on the Mediterranean because this area is seen as the cradle for the birth and growth of agricultural activities. Here, we argue that the transition from...
The alluvial deposits from Jableh (coastal Syria) and the Wadi Jarrah (inland Syria) have provided unique records of environmental history covering the last 1000 years. The pollen-derived climatic proxies inferred from these two cores suggest that a shift towards drier conditions started during the early 15th century AD. The main dry and cool inter...
Although human activity is considered to be a major driving force affecting the distribution and dynamics of Mediterranean ecosystems, the full consequences of projected climate variability and relative sea-level changes on fragile coastal ecosystems for the next century are still unknown. It is unclear how these waterfront ecosystems can be sustai...
Beirut, Sidon and Tyre were major centres of maritime trade from the Bronze Age onwards. This economic prosperity generated increased pressures on the local environment, through urbanization and harbour development. Until now, however, the impact of expanding seaport infrastructure has largely been neglected and there is a paucity of data concernin...
A common belief is that, unlike today, ancient urban areas developed in a sustainable way within the environmental limits of local natural resources and the ecosystem's capacity to respond. This long-held paradigm is based on a weak knowledge of the processes underpinning the emergence of urban life and the rise of an urban-adapted environment in a...
The Late Bronze Age world of the Eastern Mediterranean, a rich linkage of Aegean, Egyptian, Syro-Palestinian, and Hittite civilizations, collapsed famously 3200 years ago and has remained one of the mysteries of the ancient world since the event's retrieval began in the late 19(th) century AD/CE. Iconic Egyptian bas-reliefs and graphic hieroglyphic...
Anatolia forms a bridge between Europe, Africa and Asia and is influenced by all three continents in terms of climate, vegetation and human civilisation. Unfortunately, well-dated palynological records focussing on the period from the end of the classical Roman period until subrecent times are rare for Anatolia and completely absent for south-west...
The Nile Delta is a subsiding sedimentary basin that hosts similar to 66% of Egypt's population and 60% of the country's food production. Projected sea-level-rise scenarios for the coming decades have sharpened focus on the delta's potential resilience to rapid changes in accommodation space. We use chronostratigraphic data from 194 organic-rich pe...
