September 2, 2026
Open access:
Lemma, B., Beil, L., Bromm, T., Glaser, B., Stein, M., Kobe, F., Fischer, M. L., Trauth, M. H., Gosling, W. D., Foerster, V., Schaebitz, F., Tarasov, P. E., & Kaboth-Bahr, S. (2026). Hierarchical controls on charcoal signatures: A framework for interpreting paleo-fire proxies. Organic Geochemistry, 105298. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orggeochem.2026.105298
March 26, 2024
The 15th Mapping Ancient Africa seminar took place online on Friday 15th March 2024. The seminar was delivered by Bruk Lemma (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany; Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute – EBI). In the seminar Bruk presented recent advances made in the application of biomarker and stable isotope techniques in revealing the climate dynamics of the Bale Mountains in Ethiopia. He showed that it is possible to identify some plant types using these approaches, but that degradation of the signal in the sedimentary environment is possible.
Details of this seminar can be found here. You can find more Mapping Ancient Africa seminar videos on the “Ecology of the Past” YouTube channel.
January 10, 2024
Applications are invited for a fully-funded three-year PhD to commence in October 2024 with Adele Julier (University of Portsmouth, UK).
The project will focus on disentangling the history of human ignited and natural fire regimes in Britain. This will be achieved through the analysis of charcoal fragments extracted from sedimentary sequences.
For full details click here.
Deadline: 19 January 2024
June 20, 2023
Open access:
van der Sande, M.T., Bush, M.B., Åkesson, C.M., Berrio, J.C., Correia Metrio, A., Flantua, S.G.A., Hooghiemstra, H., Maezumi, S.Y., McMichael, C.N.H., Montoya, E., Mosblech, N.A.S., de Novaes Nascimento, M., Peña-Claros, M., Poorter, L., Raczka, M.F. & Gosling, W.D. (2023) Warming, drought, and disturbances lead to shifts in functional composition: A millennial-scale analysis for Amazonian and Andean sites. Global Change Biology. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16818
March 10, 2022
Maezumi, S.Y., Elliott, S., Robinson, M., Betancourt, C.J., Gregorio de Souza, J., Alves, D., Grosvenor, M., Hilbert, L., Urrego, D.H., Gosling, W.D. & Iriarte, J. (2022) Legacies of Indigenous land use and cultural burning in the Bolivian Amazon rainforest ecotone. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377, 20200499. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0499
Ecology of the past 