Das Projekt "Biomass Burning Recorded in Central and North American Lake Sediments and its Impact on Climate" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Istituto per la Dinamica dei Processi Ambientali Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerce durchgeführt. Humans impact fire regimes by changing fire ignition, fuels, and land cover. Although fire regimes dramatically alter interactions between the land surface, biosphere, and atmosphere, the impact of these fires on the climate system is not clear. Biomass burning caused by current human activities emits carbon dioxide equal to 50Prozent of the emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and is therefore highly likely to influence future climate change. The multi-proxy nature of ice and lake cores presents ideal material to investigate the links between biomass burning and climate change. The primary objective of the project is to study temporal and regional evolution of biomass burning during the Holocene in Central and North America to determine anthropogenic fire impacts on the climate system with the advent of agriculture and in a warming climate. This requires high-resolution biomass burning proxy records combined with Holocene climate records at the respective locations. The approach is based on analyses of levoglucosan, an excellent proxy for past biomass burning, on Central and North American lake sediment cores as well as on the Greenland NEEM deep ice core and their interpretation in context with climate records. The Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics, and Statistics of the University of Venice is particularly suited to host this project as it is one of the worldwide leading groups in quantitative investigations of the early impact of humans on the climate system by analyzing past fires recorded in ice and sediment cores.