Department of Earth Sciences

How Have Humans Shaped Mediterranean Landscapes?

Human societies have transformed Mediterranean environments for millennia through agriculture, mining, deforestation, and resource extraction. These activities alter vegetation cover, accelerate soil erosion, and influence the long-term evolution of landscapes. Yet the timing and magnitude of these impacts remain poorly constrained.

The SEDITION project investigates how human land use has influenced vegetation dynamics and soil erosion in the western Mediterranean since the Neolithic. By combining geomorphological observations, geochemical tracers, biomarker records, cosmogenic nuclides, and numerical modelling, the project reconstructs past environmental conditions and erosion rates to better understand the links between human activity, landscape change, and soil loss.

Elba Island: Tracing the Legacy of Ancient Metallurgy

A major focus of the project is Elba Island, Italy, a landscape profoundly shaped by centuries of mining and iron production. During Etruscan and Roman times, extensive forest clearance supplied fuel for iron smelting, potentially transforming vegetation cover and accelerating erosion across the island.

To investigate these long-term impacts, SEDITION combines cosmogenic in-situ ¹⁰Be and ¹⁴C measurements from river sediments with leaf-wax biomarker and isotope analyses from floodplain sediment archives. Together, these records provide insights into both past vegetation dynamics and erosion rates across different timescales.

The results reveal a pronounced difference between long-term and recent erosion rates. While ¹⁰Be indicates relatively low background erosion rates of approximately 20–50 mm per thousand years, in-situ ¹⁴C records suggest substantially higher rates of 129–1080 mm per thousand years. This contrast points to a marked acceleration of erosion during the late Holocene.

By integrating environmental archives with cosmogenic nuclide erosion-modelling, SEDITION evaluates whether this increase can be linked to deforestation and intensified land use associated with ancient metallurgical activities. The project ultimately aims to quantify how human societies have altered Mediterranean landscapes and to assess the long-term consequences of these changes for soil resources, ecosystem resilience, and landscape sustainability.