Quantified impact of Holocene climate change on Neolithic development, land use, and anthropogenic emissions with feedback on climate (GLUES-QUICC)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Klaus Fraedrich; Dr. Carsten Lemmen
• Subject Area: Palaeontology
• Term: from 2007 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 42267548

• Final Report Year: 2012

Final Report Abstract

To understand the two-way interaction between past societies and Holocene climate defines a transdisciplinary research challenge. How much did climatic (in)stabilities determine where and when agriculture appeared or cultures disappeared? When did humans start to interfere with and how much did they disturb global and regional carbon and hydrological cycles? We addressed these questions by using an interactively coupled model system composed of a cultural adaptation model (Global Land Use and Technological Evolution Simulator, GLUES) and an earth system model (Planet Simulator, PLASIM). Cultural feedback on climate is implemented by land surface changes and changes in water storage. The realism of the interactive simulation of climate and culture is improved by constraining the climate model with temperature and precipitation proxies and the cultural model with archaeological data compilations and vegetation proxies indicative of human land use. Abrupt climate changes are included based on globally available time series of proxy-derived climate variability. Our study is global with a focus region extending from Northern Central Europe to Central and South Asia; it covers the period 11500 to 3000 years before present. The six highlight results of our research are: 1. the successful simulated reconstruction of the timing of the transition to agriculture for Western Eurasia; 2. new insight that migration is not a prerequisite of agriculture in Europe; 3. a novel coupled system (ESMIC) of an Earth System Model and a sociotechnological model: we can now quantify climate–culture feedbacks; 4. new ways to improve the social relevance of ESMs by nudging to land climate proxies; 5. assessment of relevance of climate anomalies for early agriculture, habitability, and migration; 6. quantification of minimum and maximum Early Anthropocene carbon emissions. Our results are useful, because 1. there is now a better baseline of what the recent anthropogenic contribution to climate change should be compared to; 2. we have shown a way how to include societal change in Earth System models, and how to make these more relevant for social questions. The outcome of our research on early Holocene land use carbon emissions has been publicized on the German public radio “Deutschlandfunk – Forschung aktuell” on 8.12.2011.

Publications

• A simulation of the Neolithic transition in the Indus valley, In: Past climate, landscapes and civilizations, edited by D. Q. Fuller and L. Giosan, AGU Monograph series. In press
  Lemmen C. and A. Khan
  
• World distribution of land cover changes during Pre- and Protohistoric Times and estimation of induced carbon releases. Géomorphologie : relief, processus, environnement, 2009 (4), 303-312
  Lemmen, C.
  
• (2010): Holocene land-cover reconstructions for studies on land cover-climate feedbacks. Clim. Past 6 (4), 483–499
  Gaillard, M.-J., S. Sugita, F. Mazier, A.-K. Trondman, A. Broström, T. Hickler, J.O. Kaplan, E. Kjellström, U. Kokfelt, P. Kuneš, C.Lemmen, P. Miller J. Olofsson, A. Poska, M. Rundgren, B. Smith, G. Strandberg, R. Fyfe, A.B. Nielsen, T. Alenius, L. Balakauskas, L. Barnekow, H.J.B. Birks, A. Bjune, L. Björkman, T. Giesecke, K. Hjelle, L. Kalnina, M. Kangur, W.O. van der Knaap, T. Koff, P. Lagerås, M. Latlałowa, M. Leydet, J. Lechterbeck, M. Lindbladh, B. Odgaard, S. Peglar, U. Segerström, H. Stedingk and H. Seppä
  
• (2010): Mid-Holocene regional reorganization of climate variability: Analyses of proxy data in the frequency domain. Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 298 (3–4), 189–200
  Wirtz, K., K. Bernhardt, G. Lohmann and C. Lemmen
  
• (2010): Socio-technological revolutions and migration waves reexamining early world history with a mathematical model. In: The Spread of the Neolithic to Central Europe, D. Gronenborn and J. Petrasch (Ed.), RGZM Tagungen, 2010
  Lemmen, C. and K. W. Wirtz
  
• (2011): A simulation of the Neolithic transition in Western Eurasia. J. Archaeol. Sci. 38, 3459–3470
  Lemmen, C., D. Gronenborn and K.W. Wirtz
  
• (2011): Holocene carbon emissions as a result of anthropogenic land cover change, Holocene 21 (5), 775–791
  Kaplan, J.O., K.M. Krumhardt, E.C. Ellis, W.F. Ruddiman, C. Lemmen and K. Klein-Goldewijk
  
• (2012): Iterative land proxy based reconstruction of SST for the simulation of terrestrial Holocene climate. Earth System Dynamics Discuss. 3, 149–200
  Haberkorn, K, F. Lunkeit, R. Blender, K. Fraedrich, and C. Lemmen et al.