Gosling, W. D., de Wolf, I. K., Witteveen, N. H., de Zwaan, S. B., Van Teulingen, C., Föllmi, D., Thissen, W., Vink, V. B., Woutersen, A., Philip, A. L., van Herk, M. J., Nascimento, M. N., Prins, M. A., & McMichael, C. N. H. (2025). Herbivory and vegetation openness in a pre-farming European landscape. Plant Ecology & Diversity, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/17550874.2025.2576566
This manuscript has been developed over many years through the contributions of many MSc and BSc students based at the University of Amsterdam.
Chevalier, M., Gosling, W.D., Hooghiemstra, H., Cartapanis, O., Chase, B.M. & Kaboth-Bahr, S. (2025) Eccentricity-driven glacial climate variability and its influence on speciation in the tropical Andes. Quaternary Science Advances 100278. DOI: 10.1016/j.qsa.2025.100278
During the seminar afternoon (17 October) we heard four talks. The first from Harm Smeenge and Ariët Kieskamp (both Bosgroep) introduced the sites we were to visit on the excursion the next day. This focused on the landscape ecology and ecological history of the bogs on the eastern slopes of the Veluwe. The second talk, by Roy van Beek (Wageningen University & Research), focused on the Celtic field systems around the Veluwe. He explained the latest archaeological and archaeobotaincal work investigating the age and origins of these field systems. The third presentation was by Jasper Candel (Wageningen University & Research) and focused on the geomorphological features from glacial activity in the Veluwe region and how this has effected the development of mire ecosystems. I (William Gosling) gave the final talk, presenting the outputs of the research theses of Sanna Wessel, Chiara Raino and Roos Dik who all completed projects at the University of Amsterdam and worked together to investigate how different mega-herbivore populations in the Dutch landscape were represented by the dung fungal spores preserved in the soil.
INQUA fellow Alfred Hougnon continues his research into past environmental change in the Dahomey Gap (Benin). In the fourth video documenting his progress a short background to the project, and insights into field work, are given. Field work took place near the Ewe-Adakplame forest in the south east of Benin and involved the recovery of sediments using a Russian corer. The video also shows how interactions and engagement with the local community was developed during the research expedition.
To find out more above Alfreds project read posts on:
The 14th Mapping Ancient Africa seminar took place on Thursday 28th February 2024. The seminar was delivered by Mathias Vinnepand (Leibniz-Institute for Applied Geophysics Hannover, Germany) and presented recent advances in developing a chronology for the Lake Bosumtwi sediment record over the last c. 1 million years.
Rachel Sales, Bryan Valencia, and Majoi de Novaes Nascimento coring a different lake. In this picture, we have just pulled a core of mud up from the bottom of the lake. Photo credit: Seringe Huisman
I am sitting on the shore of Lago Condorcillo in Southern Ecuador, after a long day of travel, trying to control my shivering. At roughly 10,500 ft. above sea level, the lake is very cold, with wind that howls over the barren hills dotted with giant boulders. The lake is also almost always blanketed by thick fog and pelted by driving rain. When you’re surrounded by the thick fog punctuated by lightning bolts, it’s easy to believe that some lost civilization lurks just out of sight. Tonight we are experiencing lightning storms, which is adding to the feeling that some angry, ancient life form must live at Lago Condorcillo.
Tomorrow, I will be out in the cold and rain, balancing on an inflatable boat and fighting frostbite. Mark Bush, who is my Ph.D. advisor, Courtney Shadik, who is my lab partner and tent buddy, and I will be collecting cores of mud from the bottom of Condorcillo. We will create our rig for coring by tying two inflatable boats together, and placing a wooden platform between them. Mark, Courtney, and I will then collect our mud cores from this platform.
As I’m contemplating the hazards of camping in a lightning storm, Mark says, “Tell me everything that went wrong today.” Courtney pulls a sleeping bag closer to her. I begin to describe how Google Maps can’t seem to understand distance in the Andes, and so traveling to Lago Condorcillo took much longer than we anticipated. Courtney laughs beside me and adds, “We don’t have any matches to start a fire.” Despite our troubles, I am grinning from ear to ear, no doubt spoiling the grim mood Mark is attempting to cultivate and Lago Condorcillo is doing its best to enforce.
The montane cloud forests of South America are some of the most biodiverse habitats in the world, whilst also being especially vulnerable to climate change and human disturbance.
Today much of this landscape has been transformed into a mosaic of secondary forest and agricultural fields. This thesis uses palaeoecological proxies (pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, charcoal, organic content) to interpret ecosystem dynamics during the late Quaternary, unravelling the vegetation history of the landscape and the relationship between people and the montane cloud forest of the eastern Andean flank of Ecuador. Two new sedimentary records are examined from the montane forest adjacent to the Río Cosanga (Vinillos) and in the Quijos Valley (Huila). These sites characterise the natural dynamics of a pre-human arrival montane forest and reveal how vegetation responded during historical changes in local human populations.
Non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs) are employed in a novel approach to analyse a forest cover gradient across these sites. The analysis identifies a distinctive NPP assemblage connected to low forest cover and increased regional burning. Investigation into the late Pleistocene Vinillos sediments show volcanic activity to be the primary landscape-scale driver of ecosystem dynamics prior to human arrival, influencing montane forest populations but having little effect on vegetation composition.
Lake sediments at Huila from the last 700 years indicate the presence of pre-Hispanic peoples, managing and cultivating an open landscape. The subsequent colonization of the region by Europeans in the late 1500’s decimated the indigenous population, leading to the abandonment of the region in conjunction with an expansion in forest cover ca. 1588 CE. After approximately 130 years of vegetation recovery, montane cloud forest reached a stage of structural maturity comparable to that seen in the pre-human arrival forest. The following 100 years (1718-1822 CE) of low human population and minimal human impact in the region is proposed as a shifted ecological baseline for future restoration and conservation goals. This ‘cultural ecological baseline’ features a landscape that retains many of the ecosystem service provided by a pristine montane forest, while retaining the cultural history of its indigenous people within the vegetation. Continue Reading
Matthews-Bird, F., Brooks, S.J., Gosling, W.D., Gulliver, P., Mothes, P. & Montoya, E. (2017) Aquatic community response to volcanic eruptions on the Ecuadorian Andean flank: Evidence from the palaeoecological record. Journal of Paleolimnology 58: 437-453. DOI: 10.1007/s10933-017-0001-0
Preparing my lecture for the new Scientific Methods in Archaeology course for VU Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam students studying a minor in Geoarchaeology. The focus will be on detecting human activity in the past, to illustrate this I will include Easter Island/Rapa Nui as a case study. We will focus on how palaeoecological evidence can be used to gain insights into past human activity. Whilst putting this together I discovered these nice documentaries looking at humans and their environmental impacts on Easter Island/Rapa Nui which I wanted to share, they show how much effort people would have had to put into altering their landscape:
For further information see also:
Rull, V., Cañellas-Boltà, N., Saez, A., Margalef, O., Bao, R., Pla-Rabes, S., Valero-Garcés, B. & Giralt, S. (2013) Challenging Easter Island’s collapse: The need for interdisciplinary synergies. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 1, DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2013.00003
Ecology of the past 