Holocene climate change, vegetation history and human impact in the Central Mediterranean: evidence from the Maltese Islands

Abstract

a b s t r a c tHolocene climates and human impact in the Mediterranean basin have received much attention, but the Maltese Islands in the Central Mediterranean, although a pivotal area, have been little researched. Here, sedimentary and palynological data are presented for three cores from the Holocene coastal and shallowmarine deposits of the Maltese Islands. These show deforestation from Pinus-Cupressaceae woodland in the early Neolithic, and then a long, but relatively stable history of agriculturally degraded environments to the present day. The major climate events which have affected the Italian and Balkan peninsulas to the north, and Tunisia to the south, are not reflected in the pollen diagrams from the Maltese Islands because of the strong anthropogenic imprint on the Maltese vegetation from early in the Neolithic. Previous suggestions of environmentally-driven agricultural collapse at the end of the Neolithic appear, however, to be substantiated and may be linked to regional aridification around 4300 cal. BP. Depopulation in early Medieval times is not supported by the current palynological evidence.

Holocene environmental history of a small Mediterranean island in response to sea-level changes, climate and human impact

“…4000 cal yr B.P. onward (Carroll et al, 2012;Gambin et al, 2016;Marriner et al, 2012). At the same way, Pavlopoulos et al (2010) recorded early agro-pastoral practices on Skyros Island (only 22,310 ha, Greece) since the Neolithic time (from ca.…”

“…yr B.P. (Beffa et al, 2015;Carroll et al, 2012;Gambin et al, 2016;Tinner et al, 2009) but it was often assumed that climate was the primary driver of vegetation changes whereas anthropogenic impacts seem significant after 4000-3000 cal. yr B.P.…”

“…Islands are also fragile systems, highly vulnerable to rapid environmental changes and anthropic pressure. Since the 1990s, studies based on pollen analysis aiming to reconstruct the impact of human activities and climate changes on Mediterranean islands have increased, but most are focused on large islands such as the Balearic Islands (Burjachs et al, 1994;Yll et al, 1997), Malta (Carroll et al, 2012;Djamali et al, 2012;Gambin et al, 2016), Sardinia (Beffa et al, 2015;Di Rita and Melis, 2013) or Sicily (Noti et al, 2009;Tinner et al, 2009). In Corsica, the vegetation history is quite well known from various palynological analyses carried out on high-altitude sites (Reille, 1975(Reille, , 1977(Reille, , 1988a(Reille, , 1988bReille et al, 1997Reille et al, , 1999) and on coastal marshes (Currá et al, 2016;Reille, 1984Reille, , 1988bReille, , 1988cReille, , 1992a.…”

7300 years of vegetation history and climate for NW Malta: a Holocene perspective

“…1a) provides a key site to study these dynamics in an island context during the Holocene. However, with no peat bogs or lake deposits, suitable sites for palaeovegetation data collection are very limited; notwithstanding this situation some recent research has been carried out on coastal areas (Carroll et al, 2012;Djamali et al, 2012;Fenech, 2007;Marriner et al, 2012).…”

Late Quaternary coastal landscape morphology and evolution of the Maltese Islands (Mediterranean Sea) reconstructed from high-resolution seafloor data

“…Most evidence on sea-level change in the Maltese Islands has been derived from geomorphological, sedimentological, palynological and archaeological markers (e.g. Carroll et al 2012;Marriner et al 2012;Pedley 2011;Furlani et al 2013), but only goes back a few thousand years. In this study, we also use results from Lambeck et al (2011), who reported estimates of sea-level change for the past 20 ka from the south of Sicily, which is geographically proximal to the Maltese archipelago.…”