Global Change in the Holocene

Summary:
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.

• Covers historical environment reconstruction, scientific techniques and future projections
• INSPECTION COPY AVAILABLE TO LECTURERS
• EXCELLENT VALUE PAPERBACK EDITION
• State-of-the-art reviews from leading international scientists
• Highly illustrated throughout with photographs and illustrations
• World-wide case studies of climate variability and sea-level change

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author(s):
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

Readership:
Senior undergraduate, postgraduate, professional

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