HABCOM International Focus Groups & Projects

INQUA IFG 1702F HoLa - Holocene Global Landuse

Holocene Global Landuse (HOLA) is an interdisciplinary working group dedicated to reconstructing land use across the Holocene through a global, comparative perspective. Human land use activities are known to be drivers of vegetation change and can also produce potentially significant levels of greenhouse gases such as methane. However, the complex and variable relationships between land use (anthropic) and land cover (mostly climatic) are still insufficiently understood. Differing assumptions about these relationships have led to significant differences between models of anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC), a critical shortcoming with immediate scientific and policy implications for work on global climate. This International Focus Groups (IFG) of the Humans and the Biosphere Commission (HABCOM) of INQUA focuses on building capacity, creating new and internationally shared databases, and producing initial models of the relationships between human land use and climate. 

Contact: Marco Madella at  [email protected]

HoLa website

INQUA IFG 5678F Human colonization and paleoenvironmental contexts in subarctic and arctic Siberia and Beringia

Purposes: To foster international and interdisciplinary research on the spread of modern human populations into northernmost Siberia and Beringia, north of about 52°N latitude, during the late Pleistocene, 40,000-10,000 years ago; to review the current state of knowledge of the archaeological and palaeoecological records of Siberia and Beringia; to identify major gaps in our knowledge of the Palaeolithic settlement of northern Asia and especially Siberia; to propose new research that will lead to recovery of a comprehensive Palaeolithic record as well as an understanding of the process of Palaeolithic settlement of the region.

INQUA IFG 1604F Modelling Environmental Dynamics and Hominin Dispersals around the Mid-Pleistocene Revolution

The Mid-Pleistocene Revolution (MPR) was a period of profound ecosystem reconfiguration, caused by climatic changes driven by variations in orbital forcing that took place around 1 Ma. Changes in climate drastically affected vegetation in complex ways and led to a significant renewal of mammalian faunal complexes in Europe and elsewhere. In particular, it is generally accepted that those environmental changes affected the survival opportunities and the distribution patterns of humans in Europe. However, it is not well established how, where, when and at which extent the environment affected human population dynamics.
IFG page