Since 1995 the main aim of the International Association of Limnogeology (IAL) has been to actively promote the study of the sedimentary record of recent and ancient lakes and to show the great potential of this scientific branch of the geosciences to accurately reconstruct past climatic and environmental variability. This goal has been achieved, among other activities, through the organization of congresses. Up to now, the IAL has successfully organized four congresses: ILIC1 in Copenhagen (Denmark, 1995), ILIC2 in Brest (France, 1999), ILIC3 in Tucson (USA, 2003) and ILIC4 in Barcelona (Spain, 2007). The number of contributions and attendees has steadily increased over the years. For ILIC 4, the Local Organizing Committee, chaired by Lluís Cabrera, processed 359 submitted abstracts from 35 countries, highlighting the expansion of lake research in the arenas of sedimentology, environmental science, and paleoclimate research.The communications presented at the ILIC4 showcased a large variety of research topics and a long geologic time span. Nevertheless, the quantity and quality of presentations dealing with multi-proxy high-resolution environmental and climatic reconstructions using recent sediments has steadily grown over these four congresses. During the last ILIC4, most of the communications were related to Pleistocene and/or Holocene lacustrine systems.This themed set comprises a selection of the oral presentations presented in the last ILIC4 congress. Some other papers from this congress have been published in special issues of Sedimentary Geology (e.g. Cabrera et al., 2009) and in Palaeoclimatology, Palaeogeography, Palaeoecology (e.g. Giralt et al., 2010).The papers in this themed set focus on three key geographical areas: the southern part of South America, the Iberian Peninsula and the eastern Mediterranean. As Waldmann et al. (2010) states at the beginning of their paper: ''The Southern Hemisphere Westerlies have a considerable influence on the Southern Ocean circulation and therefore on global climate''. These authors have used a multiproxy approach (sedimentology, petrophysics and geochemistry) to study the laminated lacustrine sequence of Lago Fangano and to reconstruct the climate evolution of southern Patagonia for about the last 10 k cal. a. BP. The characterization of the Southern Westerlies fluctuations through time provides valuable climate information for the role of the southern Ocean in the recent global climate history.Climate fluctuations have played an essential role in the complex human-environment interactions, through limiting or increasing the availability of essential goods, like water, or controlling the settlement and development of activities on a certain territory. A clear example is provided by Ariztegui et al. (2010) who use a combination of archaeological and of limnological data from Lago Cardiel and from Lago Strobel (southern Patagonia, Argentina) for the last 4 k cal a BP. The surprising coincidence of low lake level periods with archaeological remains around the studied...
