First human impacts and responses of aquatic systems : A review of palaeolimnological records from around the world
- Authors: Dubois, Nathalie , Saulnier-Talbot, Emilie , Mills, Keely , Gell, Peter , Battarbee, Rick , Bennion, Helen , Chawchai, Sakonvan , Dong, Xuhui , Francus, Pierre , Flower, Roger , Gomes, Doriedson , Gregory-Eaves, Irene , Humane, Sumedh , Kattel, Giri , Jenny, JeanPhilippe , Langdon, Peter , Massaferro, Julieta , McGowan, Suzanne , Mikomagi, Annika , Ngoc, Nguyen , Ratnayake, Amila , Reid, Michael , Rose, Neil , Saros, Jasmine , Schillereff, Daniel , Tolotti, Monica , Valero-Garces, Blas
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Anthropocene Review Vol. 5, no. 1 (2018), p. 28-68
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- Description: Lake sediments constitute natural archives of past environmental changes. Historically, research has focused mainly on generating regional climate records, but records of human impacts caused by land use and exploitation of freshwater resources are now attracting scientific and management interests. Long-term environmental records are useful to establish ecosystem reference conditions, enabling comparisons with current environments and potentially allowing future trajectories to be more tightly constrained. Here we review the timing and onset of human disturbance in and around inland water ecosystems as revealed through sedimentary archives from around the world. Palaeolimnology provides access to a wealth of information reflecting early human activities and their corresponding aquatic ecological shifts. First human impacts on aquatic systems and their watersheds are highly variable in time and space. Landscape disturbance often constitutes the first anthropogenic signal in palaeolimnological records. While the effects of humans at the landscape level are relatively easily demonstrated, the earliest signals of humaninduced changes in the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems need very careful investigation using multiple proxies. Additional studies will improve our understanding of linkages between human settlements, their exploitation of land and water resources, and the downstream effects on continental waters.
- Description: Lake sediments constitute natural archives of past environmental
Paleoclimate studies and natural-resource management in the Murray-Darling Basin II: unravelling human impacts and climate variability
- Authors: Mills, Keely , Gell, Peter , Gergis, Joelle , Baker, Patrick J. , Finlayson, C. Max , Hesse, Paul , Jones, R. , Kershaw, Peter , Pearson, Stuart , Treble, Pauline , Barr, Cameron , Brookhouse, Matthew , Drysdale, Russell , McDonald, Janece , Haberle, Simon , Reid, Michael , Thoms, M. , Tibby, John
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Earth Sciences Vol. 60, no. 5 (2013), p. 561-571
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- Description: The management of the water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) has long been contested, and the effects of the recent Millennium drought and subsequent flooding events have generated acute contests over the appropriate allocation of water supplies to agricultural, domestic and environmental uses. This water-availability crisis has driven demand for improved knowledge of climate change trends, cycles of variability, the range of historical climates experienced by natural systems and the ecological health of the system relative to a past benchmark. A considerable volume of research on the past climates of southeastern Australia has been produced over recent decades, but much of this work has focused on longer geological time-scales, and is of low temporal resolution. Less evidence has been generated of recent climate change at the level of resolution that accesses the cycles of change relevant to management. Intra-decadal and near-annual resolution (high-resolution) records do exist and provide evidence of climate change and variability, and of human impact on systems, relevant to natural-resource management. There exist now many research groups using a range of proxy indicators of climate that will rapidly escalate our knowledge of management-relevant, climate change and variability. This review assembles available climate and catchment change research within, and in the vicinity of, the MDB and portrays the research activities that are responding to the knowledge need. It also discusses how paleoclimate scientists may better integrate their pursuits into the resource-management realm to enhance the utility of the science, the effectiveness of the management measures and the outcomes for the end users.
- Description: C1