An understanding of complex socio-ecological dynamics is important for the development of adaptive policies and strategies in all regions especially where successful management of key ecosystem processes/services, and their interaction with human activities, is viewed as critical. For example, within natural wildernesses, biodiversity hotspots, climate change hotspots or regions projected to be particularly vulnerable to combinations of social and biophysical stressors.

In this respect, palaeolimnological records can provide: important temporal extensions of monitored records; sources of information where none has been monitored; baseline information for restoration; and the means to develop and validate complex socio-ecological models. Increasingly, the management of regional landscapes as complex systems requires a full environmental profile of ecological information.

Thus this session looks at the need, scope and challenges of integrating and modelling multi-proxy records from lake sediments, for example, soil erosion, water quality, biodiversity and flooding.

The session would represent an activity within the ‘Regional Integration’ theme of the IGBP-PAGES Focus 4 ‘Past Human-Climate-Ecosystem Interactions’ programme.