A doctoral thesis by Rosario López Blanco from Universitat de València’s Insituto Cavanilles analyzes two lakes’ sediments (Lagunillo del Tejo and El Tobar lakes) in the Sistema Ibérico ranges, Cuenca. These lakes, which are within 60 kilometres from each other, have been used to reconstruct the climate and anthropogenic activities during the last millennium. The research has been supervised by Maria Rosa Miracle and Eduard Vicente.
The thesis’ presentation is scheduled today, April 4th, at 11:00 in the Institutos Universitarios building’s conference hall, Paterna Campus.
The current debate about global warming has increased the number of researches combining the study of these environmental changes with that of past anthropogenic activities. This thesis has used cladoceran subfossils, plant macrofossils and variations in the isotopic relationships of some elements to mainly study the level changes in the lakes and thus infer the occurrence of fires and human activities.
Taking into account a scale of several hundreds of years, both sequences coincide with the principal arid and humid stages common of the last millennium. The lower part of the sedimentological sequence tallies with a drier period during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Fluctuations in the availability of water from AD 1300 to AD 1600 have been infered, and the humid phase has been stated around Maunder Minimum (AD 1645-1715) in the Little Ice Age.
At the sedimentary registries’ most recent part, the variations in the different indicators coincide with instrumental data of the precipitations: a dry period marks the transition between XIX and XX centuries, while the following period (AD 1930-1980) shows an increase in precipitations.
Moreover, fires occurrence in the surrounds of both lakes coincides from AD 1100 to AD 1500, and it was caused by regional events like wars related to the Reconquest or the transhumance.
The sedimentary sequences in Lagunillo del Tejo and El Tobar are a good sample of the climate and men interaction in the Sistema Ibérico ranges during the last millennium.
Last update: 4 de april de 2012 08:56.
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