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Holocene vegetation and climate history of the northern Golan heights (Near East)

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An Erratum to this article was published on 09 February 2007

Abstract

In this paper we present and discuss palynological results based on a composite profile from Birkat Ram crater lake (Northern Golan, Near East) in order to reconstruct the environmental history, including human impact, of the last 6500 years. Furthermore we apply a newly-developed botanical climatological transfer function to reconstruct climate variations in the northern Golan Heights based on this pollen data-set. The Birkat Ram record is strongly influenced by anthropogenic indicators in the pollen diagram with high quantities during the Chalcolithic period/Early Bronze Age, during the Hellenistic-Roman-Byzantine periods, during the Crusader period and finally during modern times. The palaeoclimate reconstruction method used is based on a Bayesian approach and is robust in avoiding the influence of these strong anthropogenic signals on the reconstruction results. The area has always had Mediterranean climate conditions and no distinctive climate changes can be identified during the past 6500 years. Because of the orography of the Mt. Hermon region the particular geographical position of the northern Golan Heights is obviously capable of buffering large-scale fluctuations in precipitation, which have otherwise been documented for several regions in the Near East.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support was provided by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research for the project “Vegetation and climate development in the Dead Sea region during the last 15000 years” (T. Litt and A. Hense as principal investigators). We thank H.J.B. Birks and H. Woldring for valuable comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Palaeontology, University of Bonn, Nussallee 8, 53115, Bonn, Germany

    Frank Neumann & Thomas Litt

  2. Meteorological Institute, University of Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 20, 53121, Bonn, Germany

    Christian Schölzel & Andreas Hense

  3. Geological Survey of Israel, 30 Malkhei Israel Street, Jerusalem, 95501, Israel

    Mordechai Stein

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  1. Frank Neumann
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  2. Christian Schölzel
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Correspondence to Thomas Litt.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00334-006-0091-5

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Neumann, F., Schölzel, C., Litt, T. et al. Holocene vegetation and climate history of the northern Golan heights (Near East). Veget Hist Archaeobot 16, 329–346 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-006-0046-x

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