Thorsten Kiefer Lucien von Gunten Saadia Iqbal

1. Thorsten Kiefer Lucien von Gunten Saadia Iqbal

2. Newsletter special issue “Paired perspectives” Questions addressed froma present and a past angle.

5. Multidecadal Perspectiveson lower Yangtze ecosystem services Dearing et al. 2012 PNAS

6. Predictability of biomass burning in response to climate changes “Temperature is quantitatively the most important driver of changes in biomass burning over the past 21,000 yrs.” “Our results signal a serious cause for concern in the face of continuing global warming.” Daniau et al., 2012 Glob Biogeochem. Cycles

7. NICOPP, Marine Sediment Nitrogen Cycle - database • Tesdal, Galbraith, and Kienast, 2013, Biogeosciences in press • Robinson, R. S., Kienast, M. and NICOPP Working Group Members, 2012, Paleoceanography

10. 50 Priority Questions in Palaeoecology 1 When did human activities trigger global environmental change and could this define the start of the Anthropocene? 2 Why are some ecosystems more sensitive than others to global climate change, and therefore respond first or to the greatest degree? 3 How can we use palaeo data to identify the magnitude and causes of lag times in species and ecosystem responses to environmental change? 4 How can we improve our ability to disentangle and assess the relationships between climate, herbivory, fire and humans to understand long-term vegetation dynamics? 5 How did changes in human livelihood and settlement strategies and land-use affect land cover, ecosystem structure, nutrients, carbon and nitrogen cycles, and climate change over the late-Quaternary? 6 What effect has Holocene landscape fragmentation had on the ability of natural and semi-natural vegetation types to respond to environmental change? 7 What are the impacts of pollutants, including new and emerging chemicals, and their interactions with other stressors on biota? 8 Can palaeorecords provide improved insight into the theory, causes, consequences and modelling of critical transitions and alternative stable states? 9 How can palaeocology be applied to characterize the dynamics of ecosystem services? 10 What are the legacies of past environmental changes on the current structure, resilience and dynamics of natural and socio-ecological systems? 11 In the context of global change and cultural landscapes, is the concept of natural variability more useful than baselines in informing management targets, and if so how do we define and measure it in the palaeorecord? 12 How can palaeoecology help define, characterise, and inform the management of novel ecosystems? 13 How can palaeoecological data be used to inform ecosystem restoration, species recovery and reintroductions? 14 How can the palaeoecological record be applied to understand native, alien and invasive species? 15 Why do the co-occurrences of some species persist through time? Is the stability of these associations due to similar environmental niches, co-evolutionary relationships, or randomness? 16 At what rates have species ranges shifted during past intervals of climate change, and what geophysical factors, biological traits, and their interactions have affected these rates? 17 How can rates and spatial dynamics of extinctions in the fossil record and (palaeo-) climate modeling help us to predict future ecological and biodiversity loss? 18 Is there evidence for phenotypic plasticity in the fossil record and how can we distinguish it from genotypic change? 19 What is the role of sea-level change in community and diversity dynamics through time and across marine and terrestrial environments? 20 How has varying atmospheric composition shaped biotic interactions (e.g., between C3 and C4 plants, trees and grasses, megaherbivores and forage, insects and plants)? 21 What processes control the stability/variability of realized and fundamental niches through time? 22 What are the taphonomic characteristics of ancient DNA, in particular under different climatic and sedimentary contexts? 23 How does species turnover (e.g. immigrations, extinctions) and varying community composition affect ecosystem function, including carbon sequestration? 24 How can sedimentary records be used to address process-based questions and test mechanistic ecological models to provide insights about the past functioning of ecological systems? 25 What was the effect of centennial-scale climate variability (megadroughts, Little Ice Age, Medieval Climate Anomaly) on the carbon balance of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems at regional to global scales? 26 How can ecological interactions (e.g. competition, mutualism, comensalism) and their possible evolutionary consequences be inferred from palaeoecological data? 27 How have terrestrial carbon and nitrogen cycles been linked in the past, specifically at times of abrupt climate change? 28 How can palaeoecological data from continental shelf areas help characterise anthropogenic impacts on geochemical fluxes (e.g. silica, carbon, N and P) from land to shallow marine ecosystems during the Holocene? 29 How can we identify common environmental signals in multiple records at different spatial and temporal scales? 30 How do we identify and quantify the effect of diagenetic and taphonomic processes on the palaeoecological records? 31 How can we disentangle the separate and combined effects of multiple causal factors in palaeoecological records? 32 What methods can we use to assess better the leads, lags, and synchroneities in palaeorecords at different spatial scales? 33 How can we develop more robust methods for quantitative palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and ensure reliable estimates of the associated uncertainties? 34 Can we reconcile the often incompatible dates derived from different dating techniques (e.g. 210Pb & 14C, 14C & OSL), and improve our ability to date key time periods (e.g. last 100yr, MIS 3)? 35 How do we foster closer collaboration between palaeoecologists and statisticians to ensure development and dissemination of appropriate statistical techniques? 36 Do ecological principles patterns hold when applied to paleoecological patterns or are there paleoecologically important ecological processes that are impossible to study with modern observational data? 37 What common questions can be addressed by ecologists and paleoecologists to effectively bridge the contrasting spatial and temporal scales between the two disciplines? 38 What are the key concepts currently central to ecological thinking that palaeoecologists can exploit and make unique contributions including model and hypothesis testing? 39 How best can we integrate historical, archeological, and paleobiological data with modern survey records useable form? 40 What new opportunities and research agendas will be created with the adoption of automated counting systems for microfossils, arising from the availability of higher spatial, temporal, and taxonomic resolution data? 41 Can we use fossil morphology to study the evolution of developmental systems? 42 How does taxonomic and numerical resolution affect the recognition of community, metacommunity, and other ecological patterns? Is a minimum level of resolution required for some questions, but not for others? 43 How do we translate and communicate palaeoecological results effectively to ensure they are adaptively integrated into environmental strategies for the present and future? 44 What does the palaeorecord reveal about early warning signals (EWS) of abrupt change? 45 What are the appropriate null models in (palaeo-)ecology? 46 How can contemporary ecological observations, experiments and models be integrated with palaeoecology to understand long-term ecosystem change? 47 How can we integrate deterministic and stochastic process modelling into palaeoecological research? 48 When using modern analogues how can we be certain that the training set is sufficient to reconstruct past conditions? 49 How do we encourage hypothesis testing rather than data-dredging approaches when exploring relationships between proxies and records? 50 Which factors make some systems more resilient to environmental change than others?

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