The Holocene spans the 11,500 years since the end of the last Ice Age and has been a period of major global environmental change. However the rate of change has accelerated during the last hundred years, due largely to human impacts and this has led to a growing concern for the future of our environmental resources. Global Change in the Holocene demonstrates how reconstructing the record of past environmental change can provide us with essential knowledge about how our environment works and presents the reader with an informed viewpoint from which to project realistic future scenarios. The book brings together key techniques that are widely used in Holocene research, such as radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology and sediment analysis and offers a comprehensive analysis of various archives of environmental change including instrumental and documentary records, corals, lake sediments, glaciers and ice cores.



    This reference is an informative and cutting-edge resource for students of climate change, environmental science, geography, palaeoecology and archaeology.

    Frank Oldfield Introduction: the Holocene, a special time
    Raymond S. Bradley Climate forcing during the Holocene
    Paul J. Valdes An introduction to climate modelling of the Holocene
    Stepehen Shennan Holocene climate and human populations: an archaeological approach
    H.E. Wright Jr & Joanna Thorpe Climatic change and the origin of agriculture in the Near East
    Jon R. Pilcher Radiocarbon dating and environmental radiocarbon studies
    Michael G.L. Baillie & David M. Brown Dendrochronology and the reconstruction of fine-resolution environmental change in the Holocene
    Bernd Zolitschka Dating based on freshwater- and marine-laminated sediments
    H.John B. Birks Quantitative palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from Holocene biological data
    Melanie J. Leng Stable isotopes in lakes and lake sediment archives
    Phil D. Jones & Ray Thompson Instrumental Records
    Peter Brimblecombe Documentary records
    K. Briffa & E. Cooke Dendroclimatology
    Julia Cole Holocene coral records: windows in tropical climate variability
    Mark Maslin, Jennifer Pike, Catherine Stickley & Virginia Ettwein Evidence of Holocene climate variability in marine sediments
    Keith E. Barber & Dan J. Charman Holocene palaeoclimate records from peatlands
    Sherilyn C. Fritz Lacustrine perspectives on Holocene climate
    Stein-Erik Lauritzen Reconstructing Holocene climate records from speleothems
    Atle Nesje & Svein Olaf Dahl Glaciers as indicators of Holocene climate change
    David A. Fisher & Roy M. Koerner Holocene ice core climate history: a multi-variable approach
    Anson Mackay, Vivienne J. Jones & Richard W. Battarbee Approached to Holocene climate reconstruction using diatoms
    Jonathan A. Holmes & Daniel R. Engstrom Non-marine ostracod records of Holocene environmental change
    Stephen J. Brooks Chironomid analysis to interpret and quantify Holocene climate change
    Hilary H. Birks & H.John B. Birks Reconstructing Holocene climates from pollen and plant macrofossils
    Antoni Rosell-Melé Biomarkers as proxies of climate change
    Andre F. Lotter Multi-proxy climatic reconstructions
    Mark Bush Holocene climates of the lowland tropical forests
    Louis Scott The Holocene and middle latitude arid areas
    Ian D. Goodwin Unravelling climatic influences on late Holocene sea-level variability
    Martin Claussen Simulation of Holocene climate change using climate-system models

    Biography

    Anson Mackay is Reader in Environmental Change at University College London, UK Rick Battarbee is Professor of Environmental Change at University College London, UK John Birks is Professor in Quantitative Ecology & Palaeoecology at the University of Bergen, Norway and Visiting Professor of Quaternary Palaeoecology at University College London, UK Frank Oldfield is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Liverpool, UK

    An excellent book by key researchers presenting the 'state of the art' in their respective fields.
    Petra Dark, University of Reading, UK

    This book will be an informative and cutting-edge resource for all researchers in the fields of climatic change, environmental science, geography, palaeoecology and archaeology.
    CAB Abstracts

    The suite of expert authors is impressive and they have done a remarkable job in presenting their often sophisticated approaches clearly and succinctly. Even the experienced specialist may well find inspiration for new hypotheses to test.
    Boreas

    'Global Change in the Holocene,' can be highly recommended as essential reading for all those interested in the science of Holocene environmental change. The book provides a state-of-the-art, interdisciplinary guide to this research field, the hour of which has truly come.
    The Holocene