"Palaeoenvironmental Research in Balkan Mountain Areas"

Scientists and policy-makers increasingly asking: what consequences global warming will have on ecosystems? This remains unclear in many areas of the world, not least for the Balkan countries. Recent reports of climate change and an increase in the frequency of occurrence of extreme climate events and their devastating socio-economic impacts highlight the importance of this theme for health, food supply, infrastructure, and land-use planning against the background of rising global temperatures. Climatic crises can stimulate adaptation strategies and technological innovations, as ancient mass migrations and current efforts to reduce CO2 emission demonstrate. Research on long-term human-environment relationships of the past currently increases. There are efforts to reconstruct prehistoric environmental conditions and their spatiotemporal variability. This information is important, particularly with regard to the expected warming by about 2-4°C by the end of the 21st century (IPCC 2007).

Recent developments in the area of palaeoenvironmental research have made their application in the field of climate and environment reconstruction more and more attractive. Thus proposed session focuses on an interdisciplinary multiproxy, multiarchive approach to investigate modern- and palaeo-climate and environmental variations during the Holocene on societally-relevant time scales (seasonal to decadal, to modern times with increasingly solution) in high mountains of the Balkans.
The session will primarily assess the potential of geoarcheological studies with regard to all aspects which may advance the interpretation of geoarchives in mountainous zones for climate reconstruction. It should be stressed that this includes the possibility of incorporating multi-proxies such as trees, lake-sediments, glaciers, moraines, for broadening and substantiating the basis of climate reconstruction. This means:

I. to address existing concepts and their limitations
II. to identify future developments that are necessary to advance the interpretation of data
III. to pave the way for novel ideas, i.e. on the one hand side with regard to new research fields and on the other side in view of even more advanced technologies
IV. to identify fields in which projects should be promoted or encouraged.

Please submit contributions (oral presentation, poster), Deadline 30.11.2009