Environmental response to climatic and volcanic events in central Europe during the Weichselian Lateglacial

This paper reviews major results of the recent German research priority program "Changes of the geo-biosphere during the last 15,000 years", a contribution to PAGES focussing on changes of the geo-biosphere during the Weichselian Lateglacial. Different continental archives such as annually laminated lacustrine sediments, floodplain sediments, and speleothems were used to reconstruct environmental response to climatic changes and the Laacher See eruption event at ca 12,900 cal BP. Special emphasis is paid to establish a reliable time control using varve counting, high-precision radiocarbon dating of tree-ring series, and AMS radiocarbon dating of terrestrial plant macrofossils recovered from lacustrine sediments to correlate and synchronize large-scale environmental changes and events in central Europe. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.