Pleistocene and Holocene environmental changes in the Brazilian Amazon region

亚马逊拥有地球上最大的热带雨林生态系统，在全球气候、水文、碳循环和生物多样性方面发挥着重要作用。尽管亚马逊雨林对现代和未来的全球环境变化很重要，但人们对其过去的了解相对较少。在这个项目中，将利用巴西亚马逊地区赤道以北和以南不同地区的几个已有的湖泊和沼泽沉积岩心来研究晚第四纪的环境动力学。将通过创新的时间高分辨率花粉、木炭、同位素和沉积物分析、放射性碳测年和多变量数据分析进行多代理研究。特别令人感兴趣的是亚马逊不同区域晚更新世和全新世环境变化的重建，特别是(1)植被变化和植物多样性动态，(2)气候变化，包括热带辐合带(ITCZ)的动态和厄尔尼诺南方涛动(ENSO)事件的作用，(4)火灾历史及其对生态系统的影响，以及(5)过去的人类影响。我们还想研究亚马逊不同地区植被和气候变化的时间、其驱动力以及植被变化对降水和季节性变化的响应时间。了解过去的环境变化和生态响应将为理解现代和预测未来的变化提供重要的见解。该项目将是对全球变化专题的重要贡献，也将扩大我们研究所在巴西和德国之间的合作和能力建设。(德文版本见附件。)

Amazonia, which holds the largest rainforest ecosystem on Earth, plays a significant role in global climate, hydrology, carbon cycle, and biodiversity. Despite the importance of the Amazon rainforest to modern and future global environmental change relatively little is known about its past. In this project, late Quaternary environmental dynamics will be investigated using several already available lake and swamp sediment cores from different regions north and south of the equator in Brazilian Amazon region. Multiproxy studies by innovative temporal high resolution pollen, charcoal, isotope and sediment analysis, radiocarbon dating and multivariate data analysis will be applied. Of special interest is the reconstruction of late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental changes from different regions in Amazonia in particular (1) vegetation change and plant diversity dynamics, (2) climate changes including the dynamic of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the role of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, (4) fire history and its impact on ecosystems as well as (5) past human impact. We want also to study the timing of vegetation and climate change in different regions of Amazonia, its driving forces as well as the response time of vegetation change on variations in precipitation and seasonality. Understanding past environmental change and the ecological response will provide important insights to understand modern and to predict future changes. This project will be an important contribution to the Global Change thematic and will also allow to extent our institute’s collaboration and capacity building between Brazil and Germany. (For the German version see attachments.)