SWIRL - O registo climático e da vegetação terrestre durante o Quaternário no Sudoeste da Ibéria

The aim of this project is to examine the impact of environmental change in southwestern Iberia during the Quaternary period (the last 2 million years). The Quaternary period is characterised by enormous climatic variability, as the earth’s climate oscillated between the cold, dry climates of the glacial periods and the warmer, wetter climates of the interglacials. In Portugal, scientific knowledge about long-term Quaternary climate changes and their impact on ecosystems is almost nonexistent, with the exception of the last few thousand years. Even during more recent millennia, the impact of fires, droughts, climate changes, human activities and other short-term events on landscape development is obscured by a lack of high-resolution scientific data. Since the predicted climate for Portugal in the coming decades is characterised by an increase in extreme climatic events and summers that may be much hotter and drier than at present, it is obvious that a palaeoecological perspective on past climatic changes can help anticipate the impacts of these events in the future.

The project employs palaeoecological methods to address the following points:

• Links between the vegetation history of SW Iberia and global climatic change;
• Environmental impacts of abrupt climatic events;
• Long-term ecological role of fire in lowland Mediterranean vegetation;
• Timing of episodes of landscape instability, both locally and in the Sahara; and
• Connections between human occupation of SW Iberia and the development of its anthropogenic landscapes.