 Good morning everybody and welcome back to the second day of the work this gift workshop. The title of the workshop is how the planet shape history, just science, human society and civilization. Yesterday, a session was focused on how Earth processes influence influence the civilization. We see very beautiful paintings from Palo Liti caves. We also seen how the geology of the area of Rome influenced the Roman sex in all over the world. And at the end, we see how natural phenomena such as volcanic eruption may influence the climate and the society for several years. In particular, we see, we saw how the climate model results can be used to explore the impacts that volcanic eruption can have on society. The topic of tomorrow, the session of tomorrow over today, sorry, is dedicated to climate. We will explore some aspects of the influence of climatic processes on human society and civilization during historical times. Just before starting, I want to, before something I would like to remind you that all the presentation and recordings will be available on the gift website. So we invite you after the end of the workshop to disseminate presentation and some activities that we'll see during this day among your colleagues, your students. This is very important to transmit knowledge to a large number of students and teachers. So please to mute your web, your microphone to disable your webcam but don't forget to ask questions after the end of each presentation. So I think that we can start the session. Today's session. I don't know if Professor Yakawa is connected. I'm connected. Good morning. Good morning. My condivision. Okay. And I have to. Can you. Are you able to share your screen. Please. I'll try. So can you see my screen now. Okay, perfect. So welcome to the gift workshop. Professor Yaka Yaka is an assistant professor at the Nagoya University in Japan. The research interests are focused on solar storms, solar terrestrial environment, some put a number of reconstruction and many other interesting topics. The title of his presentation is an overview of the historical space climate as seen from historical archives and classics. So please Professor Ayakawa, we have a 50 minutes in total. Thank you for your introduction. I'm such a cover designated assistant professor of Nagoya University. I first wish to thank all you all for the organizing the interesting and important conference and the invitation to this opportunity. I'm going to talk about an overview of historical space climate as seen from the historical archives and classics. First, let me introduce who am I. As I said, I'm working in the Institute of Sun Earth's environment and the Institute of Advanced for Advanced Research of Nagoya University and Radoford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom. And I have been originally a historian. I also visited several historical archives or what about, and I have gotten two PhD degrees in science and history to work on this interdisciplinary field. And my main focus and interest is on the, oops, maybe I have forgotten to switch on my video. I have just noticed about it. My main focus interest is on the solar terrestrial environment and it's short term and long term variabilities. The short term variability is known as space weather events and the long term variability is frequently called a space climate as I have entitled this presentation. And such kind of history as solar terrestrial environments has been monitored for centuries. And there are paper by Brian Owens. He describes that such kind of historical measurement of the solar terrestrial environment is one of the longest running scientific experiment in the human history as it lasted roughly four centuries from 1610. Another history can be traced back to, for example, the history of the solar flare can be traced back to 1859. Back to the Richard Carrington's solar flare observation, and back to 1620, in Galileo Galilei's observations apparently, but actually the earliest observations were carried out by Thomas Harriott, whose original records are currently preserved in headboards or archives. And as we need complex procedure to approach such kind of archival materials, I just provide the published drawing of Galileo here. And, but as you can see here, there are some different reconstructions of the sunspot number, which I will address later. These observations has formed a quantitative indicator for the solar terrestrial environment over centuries. The activity has been evaluated with a number of sunspot groups and number of sunspots as well. And such kind of measurements start from 1610 to the running to the present. And they provide more homogeneous reconstruction if we calibrate the individual observations a little. And as you can see in this figure, the reconstructions are generally consistent with each other after 1900. However, if we go back to their history, the reconstructions are more inconsistent before 1900, and we need to carefully look at the original historical records to better calibrate such kind of records. And to overcome such kind of difficulties, there are some ongoing international collaborations for a regeneration of sunspot number. And so for that, and among such kind of efforts, we need tests to pay special attention to some specific periods like the Dautom minimum in the early 19th century and the Mounder minimum in the late 17th century, as their reconstructions are significantly different from each other as visualized by Munoz and Vakero in this figure. And besides their existences, their magnitude of this grant, oh, sorry, there was a typo, this secular and grant minimum are still quite controversial. And as you can see in this figure, their solar activity has significantly decreased in the last solar cycle, I mean solar cycle number 24, which lasted from 2009 to 2019. And some people have been interested in how deep the Dautom minimum and the Mounder minimum was. Was it similar to solar cycle 24, or was it something even more extremely suppressed? But such kind of difference of the reconstructions make it a little bit challenging to answer this question. And one of the chief difficulty of the reconstruction of the sunspot group number in the Mounder, you know, the Dautom minimum is partially because it is chronologically stated between the gap of two long-term observers, Staudaher and Schwade. This is in this period. And according to Willaimo et al. There are two chief observers in this period, William Herschel and Tadwish Derfringer. However, if we read the original history government, Herschel's records are mostly descriptive and they don't include sunspot drawings like these materials. And it is sometimes challenging to interpret such kind of textural records. In this regard, it is important to exploit the whole these sunspot drawings by Derfringer. But it was quite challenging to access his observations because it was stated in the historical archives. And according to the previous studies, this is a reference of Derfringer. And it says that he chiefly consulted through those astronomers, Schmidt-Deyland. And the original document has been described as Derfringer's Sonnefreken Bucher manuscripts, Kremesminister Stehenwald, Kremesminister in Germany. However, however, of course, Kremesminister is not in Germany, but in Austria as visualized in this map. And I tried to contact some people in Kremesminister, but it took some time to locate the original manuscript. And finally, I managed to visit the Kremesminister observatory, thanks to the help of Father Amand Kramel. And I managed to consult the original documents in this expedition. And we started investigation of the original archival records in the Dautom Minimum. And this is what Derfringer has recorded during the Dautom Minimum. And he has recorded a number of sunspot drawings over the time from 1832 to 1824. And actually, Derfringer's observations are quite significant because it has a wide chronological coverage during the Dautom Minimum. And who these drawings are available throughout his observations. And we can see spot distributions, I mean sunspot positions from these materials for the whole disk on each date. And the sunspot area seems Derfringer's something, while it looks significantly exaggerated in terms of the area. And there are some difficulties as well. Besides the area, the observational timing was not explicitly endorsed and it was a little bit challenging to determine the positions by themselves. But fortunately, he recorded these drawings in sequence. Therefore, we managed to track the motion of the sunspots to constrain the sunspot portion. And capits must be noted when we exploit such kind of historical documents because they are original motivations. It's sometimes different. And according to Derfringer himself, his original motivation was the measurement of the sun's solar altitude in order to determine the local time. And his telescope has been preserved in the observatory itself. And you can see their image right like this. And yes, according to Frank Schwab, it was a telescope of 5.5 feet length. And he also has preserved a meteorological log looks as well. And currently, his log looks are preserved in four volumes, which are taken here. And they are the example provided by the Prime Minister of the battery. And as you can see, there are some small sunspot drawings around here as encircled in a reddish color. But we need some special attention to what previous studies have done because previous studies have interpreted the dates with such kind of measurements without sunspot drawings as spotless days. And for example, the absence of sunspot drawing on 1818 July 25th has been considered as a spotless day. But this is 24th and this is 26th and you can see similar sunspots on both dates. And it is extremely unlikely for both of sunspot groups to disappear in between. And actually, if we take a look at this summary drawing with this summary drawings with these yellowish disks, we can see that we can express it 300% at a motion of such kind of sunspot groups. It came from here, here and here, from 24th to 26th and 27th. And as I said, the sudden disappearance of these groups is extremely unlikely and moreover, and we need to be cautious if these logbooks are very original or not because this is the logbook. As you can see, this is very large and sunspots observation is a kind of a derogate task. It's not a weight lifting. And you need to carefully take a look at sunspot observations like this. Therefore, if you start weight lifting with such kind of heavy material, it will make your observations significantly difficult and disturbed. And comparing these materials, we are currently considering that there are probably lots and moreover there are some lost details in the summary manuscript as well. And we consider that it is more likely that they have the same original daily sunspot drawings and they have been compiled from, and what to say, their logbooks and these summary drawings have been compiled from such kind of materials afterwards. And on this basis, we have revised their ringer stator in the existing rigors. And so far, all the spot restays in Hoidu and Shaten, the previous studies, Hoidu and Shaten, Vakero Edo were actually several altitude observations without sunspot drawings and not usable for spot restays as pointed out by Vakero and Gareh Karego 2014. We have removed this data and we have also revised the date for several parts. And we have also recounted all the sunspot groups following the definition of sunspot group classification. And we have taken the yearly average, which has been significantly revised, and revised trend is more consistent with what their Royals of a drill, Belgium, is providing a lot of what can be found in Svalbard and Shaten's group sunspot number series. And this is our result for the daily sunspot group number counting. And this is the comparison of the sunspot group, the yearly average of the sunspot group number with our research and previous studies. The previous studies have been visualized by the black broken line. As you can see the sunspot solar cycles were broken in in their reconstructions but when we revised this data on the basis of the original manuscript, these curves have been significantly revised and now we can see the solar cycle quite clearly. And we have also derived the sunspot position on the basis of the hit their fingers original manuscript tracking the motion of the sunspots. And now how there are reconstruction and something like this. So you can see sunspots in both solar hemispheres, just like in a normal solar cycles, but this is significantly different from the amount of minimum, which I have mentioned in the beginning of my presentation. At the same time, the sunspot position, the sunspot appears on appears only in the southern solar hemisphere, as shown in the figure below. The solar cycles has been significantly suppressed according to without skin at all and for Kato at all. Although some people still consider that there were some solar cycle surviving that kind of station. And for the, for the solar sunspot observation in the doubt on minimum, the solar cycle can be evidently seen in the sunspot group number in contrast with what has been seen in the founder minimum. And during the doubt on minimum, we conformed at least up to six sunspot groups in their ringer sunspot observations, whereas during the founder minimum, there are at this one to two groups in the core period. And the sunspots are located in both solar hemispheres in the doubt on minimum in contrast with the founder minimum where sunspots appeared in the southern solar hemisphere most free. And so such kind of revisions have been carried out in multiple team in several countries, and their recreation has ended up some significant trend changes in the solar activity. And as you can see, their old version moves like a reddish broken line with up lighting trend. And after revision, it becomes something like pink, pink broken line, which is, which has a straight upward trend, whereas this is something quite stable. We wonder how far we can trace back such kind of sort of activity that beyond their onset of trascopic observations. And such kind of sunspot number recalibration is extremely important when we extend our knowledge with with some proxy records like cosmogenic isotopes, because we tend to calibrate cosmogenic isotope data with the observational records. And moreover, after 19, after 1950, the human being started nuclear tests and that's disturbed carbon 14, for example, and we can't use the modern measurements as a kind of calibration point. And in this regard, for example, their uprising trend has been modified to some something more stable, and this will immediately influence other solar activity reconstruction in the medieval to ancient era. And apart from such kind of cosmogenic isotope data, we can also use some historical records, because some, for example, the aurora has been a kind of footprints of the solar options. And this is an example from the current event in 1859 when there's first solar rare has been witnessed. And at that time, the white right rare caused significant geomagnetic storm and extension of the all worlds toward low latitude regions as well. You can see the overall visibility reports all over the world, especially in the northern, northern hemisphere, even in the southern hemisphere there are some reports from South America and Oceania as well. And such kind of intense warfare cause significant extension of the overall greater world. And similar thing happened in 1989 March. And at that time, a significant sunspot group caused a number of solar options and cause significant geomagnetic disturbance and extended the overall significant greater world. And as exemplified in these, with these case reports, the magnetic storms and all of us are significant correlation with each other. Actually, such kind of overall behaviors will represent their solar activity. And it was, John Dalton has actually noticed significant reduction of the overall frequency between 1796 to 1826. And afterward at this period was named after named Dalton minimum after John Dalton by some silverman in the Yosemite conference. And such kind of hints will allow us to trace back the history of the solar activity in different methods, apart from the cosmogenic isotopes. And there are some episodes in the historical epoch, for example, it stows us and other people consider that I thought there may have witnessed an ancient candidate or as recorded in his methodology or and this has been tentatively these other candidates over in 349 in Prini and 344 BC in Timorion story in Poltak in Stoza's paper. And this is, and when we compare such kind of reports. This is chronologically located in the bottom of their Greek grant minimum, running from 3990 BC to 330 BC as visualize in who it was figure. And at that time, also tells was a fence and assos, and according to bounds, and we can understand that there were significant Germanic storm back in the time of our so tells, although the solar cycle, so activity has been significantly suppressed at that time this is a kind of unique solar storm. In Greek minimum. And we can further extend our history back. For example, this is trace copy of the Cuneiform tablet from of the stronghold diaries from Babylon, dated on BC 567 March. And it says they could do I mean the British right. Extended westward, and it lasted about two to half hour, I mean, or about an hour. And there are further evidence from a Syrian Cuneiform tablets as well. They are the trace copy of the Cuneiform tablets from the British rivalry. And they are the transcription and translation. And these general essays. Discuss about the appearance of some strange says your phenomena and their interpretation in the astrological context, and they discuss about the reddish roles and reddish crowds for example. And although these records are not stated explicitly they are, we can find the signature of the astrologers in these materials. And just like poor postdocs in the modern time, they, they had a kind of tenure, and we can narrow down the rate they trench on this basis. And the longest one was the first one learning from 679 to 655 BC and other two or 677 to 666 BC and 679 to 670 BC. And we also need to pay attention to the variability of the magnetic latitude. Because the magnetic pole moves over the time. And at that time, the magnetic pole was stated in the Syrian side and more closer to the Mesopotamia. And therefore the magnetic latitude was somewhat higher, I mean, about 15 degree higher than the modern time as visualized in this figure. And we have also checked the data from carbon 14, which will be enhanced when the solar activity is not that active. And such kind of records could be contextualized when the carbon 14 concentration was significantly reducing, which indicates the solar activity was a lot higher. And interestingly, there are some local significant positive excursion of the carbon 14 concentration. And park at all, as well as oil at all in the university has considered that this positive excursion would be so right up extreme solar option at the time, and while it is difficult to say something quite concrete about their relationship with each other, one of such kind of Asterium records chronological all up with such kind of carbon 14 spike. And, and whoops. In order to show candidate orders in Mesopotamia, we at least need significant germinated storms, which is comparable to the 1989 March storm, which showed all down to Florida, if we take the magnetic latitude at that time into consideration. And we have further extended analysis back in the time, and father records have been detected from Chinese father Chinese record has been detected in the Bumble on nose. People's has been controversially understood in shoe at all as work shoe at all has understood this as a comet in 1034 959 BC or order in 950 BC in the same book. This, this kind of discrepancy is derived from their variants of the original records, because the Bumble on nose have several variants. And it's one of the variants I mean, which is known as current text says in the 19th year of King Chow. I think there was a fuzzy a star in the way and another variant ancient text said in the last year of the King Chow or show during the night of five current right penetrated the way. Bumble, and actually, we need to consider which variant are more reliable. And the original, the original version of the Bumble on nose are lost at least by 10th to 13th century and the modern or current text has been frequently considered as a kind of fabrication in the 16th century. And the ancient text is a kind of scary reconstructions from a extant citation from for the older version and has scary discussions has has considered an ancient text to be more reliable. Therefore, if we try to interpret this report. We need to interpret this as the we need to read this record as during the night of five colors right penetrated the way and order the chronology itself was also controversial we can see as several theological studies to their now down their chronological range. For example, Cambridge history of ancient China indicated that the last year King Chow was something like 957 BC, and the Chinese research efforts have located his last age for something like 977 BC. And we have at least two different chronologies for this king. And in this regard, we can date this event either in 957 BC or 977 BC with a one year uncertainty, because the current their system was not the same with their, our calendar in the ancient China. And this allows us to calculate the distance from the contemporary most magnetic pole. And which was located about 14 degree closer to China, because it was under the Eurasian site that in contrast with the modern time. And at that time the Chinese capital was in halogen 39 degree magnetic that and on this basis, we, we have computed magnetic that you to be 39 magnetic latitude or, or 38.9 magnetic latitude. And the text said that it was during the night, which is a nighttime observation and travel over observation, of course, and it described their phenomenon as five colored right. And we have found a parallel record in 1847 October, for example, Morgan recorded a powerful overall display in Cambridge on 24 October 1847. And it's this phenomenon penetrated the way and the ways around the porous tour. Indicate which indicates the altitude of modern 34 degree in terms of its special extent. And thank to the altitude information, we can compute the equator at boundary of the candidate or and it was probably extended more than 45 extended to the lower equator site, then 45.5 degree or 45.4 degree in gratitude. And as I said, they're, they're either good correlation between the equator at boundary of the overall and the geomagnetic storm intensity in the DSD index. And therefore, we can use a Yokoyama models model to calculate the magnitude of the probable geomagnetic storm, something like minus 300 plus minus 50 minute dessert. So we have located this report in contrast with us. Decade our Sunspot number reconstructed from reconstructed by who at all in getting a university and with a skin at all in our university in Finland. And as you can see here, these recourse, or their Chinese recourse have today to candidate dates, but both of them stated before the Homeric ground minimum. In 810 to 740 BC. And this is actually a unique reference for such kind of space weather event. Before the Homeric ground minimum because other records, for example, the yellowish bar indicates their chronological date range for the Australian records and the yellow bar is that indicates the candidate order in the astronomical diaries from Babylon and green birds indicates a kind of alleged candidate over in the Bible order their reliability for this interpretation is out of it controversial. And so now it's time to, it's, we are almost arriving at the end of the time travel of this sort of activity reconstruction. I'm in the space climate. Before 1610, it is slightly challenging to quantity degree extend our knowledge on the historical sort of activity. Still, apart from the cosmogenic isotopes candidate or records play major roles to indirectly understand the long term server variability. That's done by us as was also the case with John Dalton's overall observations, which provided a kind of one of the earliest hints for the doubt on minimum. The candidates all have been dated back to the earliest, earliest drawing in the clean chronicle, which couldn't, which I couldn't introduce here because it was also archival material to some procedures are needed. And the earliest reports in 567 BC in the astronomical diaries from Babylon. But recent efforts have detected some more data reports in their area period, for example in a Syria between 679 to 655 BC and in China. The earliest report in nine in China, the artist report could have been located in 957 or 977 BC, according to the pamphlet on nose. So, these records allow us to extend their chronology of space climate for three million year. That was the history of space with our events as well. And these records can help their proxy reconstruction from previous and ice course. This is all for my presentation. Thank you for your attention. Any comments or discussions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you again for all organizers and audience who came all the way here and arranged this important opportunity. Thank you. I would like to just an information about the tree rings and the ice course. How they give information on the solar activity. You mean the proxy record from. Yes, yes, because you use this information to integrate. Yes. Okay, that's a good question. Firstly, when there's our activity is active enough, their solar wind will shut out their characteristic cosmic rays, and it will decrease the injection of the amount of the galaxy cosmic ray to the terrestrial magnetic fields. But if this activity is weaker, then the galactic cosmic ray will be injected to their terrestrial atmosphere, and that will generate more carbon 14. I mean the radioactive isotopes like carbon 14 or barely on 10. And therefore, we have a kind of good anti correlation between the amount of cosmogenic isotopes, for example, of carbon 14 tree rings and bear obtain ice cores with the sort of activity that I mean the transport number, for example. Therefore, if we manage to reconstruct them back in the past, we can certainly get some idea about how their house the sun was active. Okay. Thank you. And it seems there, there is some question about the position of the magnetic pole and or can I answer this as well. Yes, please. Okay. So, Dr. Miriam Madani asked me about say that I didn't quite understand the link between the move of magnetic pole and all or could you get back to that prayer, please. Okay, that's another good question. When the, well, the overall tends to shape a kind of oval shape along the magnetic pole, because, or will be generated by the presentation of electrons, which will whose band will be expanded when their magnetic strong was large enough. And what to say, therefore, their magnetic pole will be a kind of center for such kind of oval. They extend their spatial extent from such kind of center, I mean the magnetic pole indicates with correlates well with the intensity of the magnetic storms according to the empirical studies provided by Yokoyama at all, for example. Therefore, if the more magnetic pole is close to somewhere, I mean, if your entry magnetic pole is near Greenland. Therefore, in the American sector, we have more chance to see or we generally have more chance to see or order the magnetic latitude is somewhat, somewhat similar in the Eurasian site. I mean, in what to say in New England, the geographic latitude is much lower than the original England. However, the magnetic latitude is somewhat similar because of the position of the inclination of the magnetic pole. Therefore, the chance of seeing or it's quite similar between New England and England, if we take their current position of the magnetic pole into consideration, I hope I am answering your question appropriately. So any other comments or questions? Any other questions, comments? Okay, yes, thanks a lot. Thank you. It was good. Okay. I don't know if there are any questions. Okay, if there are no questions. Thanks very much for your presentation, for your interesting presentation, and I think that we can move to the next speaker, Laura. I think, yes. Hello. I, I authorized you to share the screen. Laura is a junior professor in environmental genomics in aquatic systems. She works at the University of Costanza. She is mainly focused on analyzing ecosystems in their history, their evolution, in particular using environmental DNA, eDNA, sorting samples, such as sediment samples or water samples. The presentation of today is entitled, This is the title. Okay, molecular paleo-ecology to track the history of species and ecosystems. Thanks very much for coming here and please. Yeah, you're very welcome. Do you hear me? Yes. And do you have the correct slide? Do you all see the correct slide and not the presenter? No, I see the, I don't see the full screen mode. Ah, you see the presenter at the moment. Yes, the presenter. Yes. Okay. I think that you have to go. Is it now? Now, right? Perfect. Okay. Thank you very much. I have two screens. I was not completely sure which one was the. Thank you very much. Okay, now you have it, right? Yes. Okay, fantastic. So yes, so welcome. So I'm going to tell you about something else now, but also about natural phenomena basically shaping environmental history. And vice versa, humans shaping ecosystems and thus environmental history and how we can track it using genomics and genetics. So what we do there, so I've called the talk molecular paleo-ecology to track the history of species and ecosystems. And what we do now. Okay. So what we use is something that we call environmental DNA and this is a depiction that I, I like to show initially, which is this picture of myself, taking a spoonful of mud. In this case, I must say it wasn't old enough to make the Ice Age world appear, but nonetheless the idea of this environmental DNA that we take a spoonful of mud. And basically we never see anything, but on the end of what we do in the lab on the computer screen we get information on what the Ice Age world or whatever time period we're looking at may have looked like. And now environmental DNA is something that now, nowadays is has become much more popular. And it is, maybe you've also heard of this, the substance basically so we have DNA everywhere in the world. The outside of basically organismal entity so outside of bodies or plants so outside of the organisms themselves or without seeing the organisms. So not always clear if it's outside but it can be it's independent of them independent of seeing the organism. And now it is usually used in the form of modern environmental DNA modern DNA to survey and monitor biodiversity and there are many many applications coming up at the moment. Among them, you might know about this, the possibility to trace corona viruses in wastewater. That is, for example, also an environmental DNA application. And what I primarily work with is ancient environmental DNA and that we use then to reconstruct past biodiversity. An ancient environmental DNA is obviously a very interesting substance because we can get a lot of information on past ecosystems from this. But first of all like to talk about what we can actually understand. So also in comparison to what we can understand. When we look at modern environmental DNA so on the side here is a picture, a figure made by my colleague Mickey Baland at Senkbeck in Frankfurt, where you see a modern environment on top, basically and on the bottom, you would see the the modern environment and in between basically this the sediment cores reaching from the bottom to the top with all the different things that you would see so here we see of course the the top environment is an industrialized landscape. We have here we have a factory we have livestock. We have a town there. Oh sorry. We have yes. And all these sorts of things we at the same time have a different climate we have here for example, smaller glaciers and in general. This looks different. We have a different. So this is this is then at least initially a natural phenomenon that we that we have a change in climatic. And then we have something that is clear here that basically the biodiversity around this place has changed quite dramatically now because the colors are quite similar. It's not so clear but for example, at least in this hypothesis of how it was. There were for example many, many more fish and different fish in the water so this was definitely not immediately post glacial but at some point in between. Yeah, so there was there was a lot of biodiversity. Oh well there was still mammoths apparently and other places to see mega fauna, but there was already forest quite substantially. And yes so it was generally it was a very, very different environment whereas at the top, we have for example we have the fields here, we have less things in the water so the water is emptier in this case. And yeah, in general it's, it is different so this is the, this is a long time scale something that we can see. And when we come to very practical applications. I have put here together a comparison of what you could do with modern environmental DNA, which is, you can use it in ecology conservation biology invasion biology and bio monitoring, whereas also these are things that you can equally use in the ancient environmental DNA to look at slightly different things so for example process understanding to understand how things actually happened track response and resilience infer rates of change determined drivers. We can possibly define restoration targets or historical pre impact reference states, which is really a very important thing that we want to do in in in conservation policies. And it's quite difficult to do to actually find what would be the natural state, however, if you think about going back through time prior to industrialization then we're also for example at a different climatic time we might be in the little ice age so maybe this is not the best reference date. Nonetheless, we can see if we have recent anthropogenic impact this is something that then we might want to see. We can now this is important for for what we're what we're seeing at the moment one big problem at the moment is invasive alien species so for invasion biologies we can try and approximate first appearance states in particular in ecosystems that are not well monitored, most ecosystems in the world are not well monitored so this is this this is definitely. I hope this can be a substantial addition to what's to our toolbox, and we can track invading genotypes. Now this is very important with environmental DNA we cannot only analyze these so actually determine species identify species but we can look beyond the species. We can see where did they come from, we can look into the population so we can look into interest specific divergence. And finally, quite easily so we can extend monitoring time series as I said most places in the world are not well monitored for conservation purposes this is of course important that we want to see what happened before. And we can do this as I so we can do this on different time scales and I'll talk about exactly where we can do what later in many cases we can actually go very far so we can possibly go back to the ice ages. If the archive that we have reaches back that far. Now the quest one important thing here is that this environmental DNA was actually designed initially on such samples. So the field of environmental DNA that is now has now really become important in modern ecosystem analysis and then by diversity conservation and is becoming more and more important. In the last years, the original publications to use such methods are actually from how you equality, which is quite clear, quite logical because in the in the modern world we can see many things many things we cannot see but many things we can. But for past environments, we very often cannot. So we can only trace things that actually have visible remains right. If you look under the microscope now with DNA you can go and see other things that you cannot see under the microscope. And this principle was then so appealing that this has now been used or is being used very very much very strongly for conservation purposes to for example also there in water track the DNA of recently invaded or invading species to see where the where where the invasion from this or so where you don't even see the species yet, but this is a principle that is actually not from like pure molecular biology or also recent ecology but it's actually from policy. And as you can imagine. And work with most of all our lake sediment course so lake sediment course because they are an excellent archive of ecosystem changes. We have if we're lucky and and the sediment was deposited nicely then actually the picture photo that I have here. It's not that nice but it's nonetheless a core. You see here the layers are the way that we went into the sediment was not perfect. Yes, we have a nice sedimentation of course through time and different layers, we can do this so this is a picture up on top is a platform a pouring platform only constants where I am at the moment. And below that we're sampling this course over a cleanly and right next to it this little plastic tube here with this clear liquid is the. That is then the DNA extract. Okay, so as I said DNA and sediments is a nice it's, it exists, and it's really nice because you can, you can look at the through time we can look through the different layers and you can get information. It exists as extra cellular and as intracellular DNA. It binds to the clay sand, humic and organo mineral substances. And because of that because it binds to it and then it is sedimented, it records the surrounding biodiversity as sedimentation, and it is stored in the sediments with the temporal deposition of sediments. As I already mentioned it is not limited to organisms with visible remains. This is really important, because you can imagine that now we can look at all sorts of organizational groups that we could not look at before. It also integrates over the ecosystem. Lake sediments, not only the DNA but also the rest of the legs that have it's tend to do this so they record both the terrestrial surroundings and the aquatic ecosystems. Here's a little figure from one of my earlier publications, showing this for the north of for a lake in the north of Greenland that also experienced a marine phase so this blue part here is the, is the marine phase. Sorry, the blue part is the marine phase and before that it is the, yeah. This is this is terrestrial and terrestrial again, and this is a record starting right after a deglaciation. Yeah, so I'm sorry about this scribble which I had not seen. Now I'm going to show you a bit about how we actually do it right what do we do what do we need to do. We need a lab we need an ancient DNA lab or an environmental DNA lab but we definitely have to go to a specific lab area and we do this because it is very very pro to contamination. So in this ancient environmental DNA lab this year is Anna Chagas one of my PhD students, extracting DNA so also glad and all these funny things that actually now after two years of pandemic don't seem so strange anymore. It's not such a special thing right anymore that people walk around like this so this was luckily for us we did not have to get used to any, any new clothes and wearing masks and so on we find that perfectly normal when we go to the lab. And also to the DNA lab by the way. So we, we try to be as clean as possible and in this particular lab, we then do the DNA extraction and the PCR setup or the shotgun library. So this is important we do not run this reaction this PCR, the polymerase chain reaction. We do not run this in this lab but we go to a different lab because in this reaction. This is where DNA is replicated, and the concentration of the DNA gets a lot larger. And this is when then contamination can happen. So we go to a different lab the post PCR lab and then we do this PCR and we prepare everything for sequencing we sequence on a, on a for example on an Illumina sequencer this is what we use most of the time. And we get a lot of sequences. Nowadays with high throughput sequencing, and we can go through these with bioinformatic filtering and get identifications of the organisms through comparison to sequence databases. So we have a lot of analysis, ecological analysis of the ecosystems or also on the sequences themselves for example phylogenetic or evolutionary analysis on the sequences themselves. Okay. Yeah, so now I'm going to. So these are this is what we do in the lab and there are different ways of looking at the, at the. So this DNA meta bar coding that is basically in a way a classical approach, which means that we get particular markers of a certain gene, with which we can identify the taxa in the sample, the so the organism of the sample as best possible. It does not always have to be to species level it can sometimes only be to genus level or to family level but as best possible. It's the same if you look at pollen for example many pollen are not identified to species, they are identified to to some super specific taxon. Nonetheless, so with DNA meta bar coding we can get very very good identification that we do this, we do this so we get a high throughput DNA based identification of multiple species. So, for example, of a cinnamon core in Siberia on the time air peninsula and this is just the aquatic species aquatic plants, and for the aquatic plants, what you see here, you don't you see that there is really something happened and it is quite a clear signal through the lake so these are the 8,000 years, and what you see so aquatic and riparian so of the, of the surrounding of the lake directly in the next to the water. So for example, these are proper aquatics he pours that then we have a peak in this and these are the reads so the number of times that we actually read this sequence in the sample. So we have a lot of reads down here and it's it's slowly decreases in between there is a peak here but nonetheless so this is this is probably the lake getting smaller and the population becoming smaller and this is kind of mirrored on the other hand by by organisms that live on the edges of the lake that then become more more prominent in the data set so this is one thing that we see another thing we see a very clear a signal of climatic changes and this is in this. So these are the macrophages the aquatic macrophages. Nymphase are the water lilies and Potomac get on there. What are they called there anyway they're also quite fast. And the thing is that nowadays in this here in this place here in the Arctic at least still there are no macrophages there are no proper aquatic plants. There are definitely not not any water lilies. These actually need much much higher temperatures than we have there at the moment. However, there is a clear indication so this here I only have some circles, because the numbers were low, but they were definitely right so this is the numbers are low in this case. So this is without any quantification, however they they're existent, and this is then. This is a climatic signal. As I said, one thing that is very special to DNA is that we cannot only see the differences in species but we can actually also see differences in under the level of species so interest specific change and here this is a completely made up data set that does not exist but that is a kind of data that we can retrieve, which would be so what you see here you kind of also this is also an Arctic example of, for example sediment cores that you would have from maybe going back to the beginning of the. I'm sorry, is someone. Did you see this. Yes. It said no no I'm sorry I'm so it seemed that someone was actually in the presentation. Yes, yes. There are some black lines in the yes and they have appeared. Okay, I'm going to continue. Yes, yes, but it's okay. Okay. Anyway, so we have these cores and what we would see here this is then in Alaska, we see that there is a certain haplotype or genome type right a certain sequence type, which is different from this other sequence type, but only because. We have these so there's this T and a here and there's a C and G here. So this is the difference. And then we have a difference in this core that apparently so this would be this example. This is the same species right however we see here we see that we have this dark colored genotype right at the beginning after the last glacial, whereas, further to the west we have for whatever wherever you stand. So in Siberia we would have this this light color genotype and then, which is probably not but this is just to depict it right. This could be any organism it can be a plant. They might not even look different. This is just for depiction they might not look different they might look exactly the same and they would be if we start pollen, you would not see this. This is exactly the idea. So but what we see here is that we have this type, and we didn't have it here over on the other side of the bearing straight. So the hypothesis then would be aha it arrived here later. It came there, whereas the species wasn't present whereas here the species was present. But this, the, this type, and then apparently there was a turnover in the type so there was maybe something like a competitive exclusion, whereas over in this place this did not happen. And now of course then we can think about what happened so as I said, this data set does not exist yet this type of like geographically spanning data set of this type of data but we have been acquiring similar data sets for single points. So for example, one point where we have looked into these and into such things this is at the in time here. At the tree line, the, the place where really the forest kind of fades into tundra this is in this area it's a it's a huge area of hundreds of kilometers. When I was at the Alfred Wigner Institute in Potsdam, we did the group there is still working on this quite heavily involved in this idea of tree line changes. So in this place we have a tree line that is changing at the moment that has changed a number of times previously and also it is an area in which different sister species come together so there are different species of this area, however, they are really very closely related. And they can also hybridize. And so this is exactly the area where we looked and the first thing that we checked is, how is the vegetation represented in the, in the lakes. This is of course really important to make sure that whatever you're saying is is valid. So, we collected surface sediments from lakes and the southern time your peninsula. And what we found is that they are there's a really good agreement between all of these methods, DNA meta bar coding pollen and vegetation assessment. Interestingly, in this analysis. The DNA meta bar coding revealed most taxa. So most different identifications whereas the pollen has only 43 and the vegetation assessment only 31. Now this is really low for a vegetation assessment in the field. And this is probably also not true, but it depends on who does the vegetation assessment. It's important point to remember that when you go and you take a sample for DNA, of course, whoever is in the field doesn't have to be very skilled whoever looks at the data has to be skilled in knowing what organisms are there but not the person in the field whereas for for going to the field as a, yeah, to do the assessment in the field you need to know. Anyway, so it did really well. So we think that it is all very valid and the number of colleagues have done similar studies in the last years, and have seen that yes, this it is it's a very valid signal. Now it's also valid through time so this is then the next thing a comparison of, of the data that you can get for larches for large trees and for pollen through a core a core that is, well two cores actually one is here five years in age and the other one, 6,800 and both cores, the, the number of large pollen and the number of DNA reads which you see here so this is then the, this is the DNA meta bar coding only the large trees, not the whole vegetation and this is the pollen so extracted from this and you see that the correspondence is really really high. And also if you look at the complete vegetation, and how it changed so this is from a principle component analysis and how the vegetation change, you see that the, the major changes are recovered at the same time, mind you in the full vegetation it is not the same. We do not see exactly the same vegetation so this means that it's also not just. You cannot just replace pollen by DNA but you get a fuller spectrum you get much more and definitely the overall vegetation changes are are the same that are recovered the same times. Now, as I said it's not just the full vegetation that you can get but also exactly these small scale changes in this case not within a species between between very, very similar species that can actually also hybridize, but that are are separated and there I checked in the, in these cores, what haplotypes are there this is so this is mitochondrial DNA. So this is it's called mt DNA mitochondrial DNA and so these different types, just the different types it doesn't matter exactly where it is and what they're also I found that I could distinguish this, and I found a very interesting thing and that is that. So I thought. This is the more southern lake and it is closer to the actual range of this laryx ciberica, whereas this top core is actually closer to the range of laryx chameleon, the chameleon large. The processes had actually been before seeing the data that probably I would have much more of this large ciberica which in this case is this light colored stuff in this core in the CH06, whereas I would have more of the dark color the laryx in the CH12. And then it turned out that the opposite was in a way the case. We did see I did see at the beginning of the core, nearly exclusively in some samples exclusively this white type and when they are kind of gray, this is when I had both types. But in so in this case what we saw was a turnover, and it is already a very early turnover from one type to the other between five and 6000 years. So there was always still a little bit so I said 10% if it's more than so this is when I said it's a mixed sample. So there was always a little bit of this other but there was nearly a turnover. So this actually interestingly this did not happen until right at the top for the lake that is actually closer in range to large Bellini. The reason for this is that we modeled also the way that the population source so by with a model of a of a colleague Stefan Kruse at the Alfred Wigner Institute and what is clear here is this is so this is the size of the the populations right the dark blue so this is the size the bars are the size of the populations in general. And then again there's the dark blue and the light blue, the light green the light green here is like the, the, the uncolored type, whereas the dark blue is then the dark color type in this depiction. And because these are two species they actually have differences in their ecology. And what we saw and so basically this light color type should be more selected for for warmer and less harsh conditions. However, it doesn't stay. If it is in. So, it is competitively less, less, it's less competitively able to cope with with with dense population so it is easily out competed by this other large. So if the populations grow in terms of the forest gets denser. The first thing that happens is actually that this haplotype that is associated with more harsh conditions can out compete the other one. And on the contrary, to all the ideas that have that that that were if you just look at normal like species distribution models we see here, Larix Iberica is in an area with lower thawing depth so less harsh temperatures, less Arctic conditions than the Larix Malini is in this very, very harsh, very, very continental and harsh conditions with a low permafrost thawing depth and. So the initial idea would be when the conditions get warmer when our climate is changing, we would expect and there were previous papers on this. So this is the expansion of the range of Larix Iberica. Now, after this looking back in time and actually seeing these differences, empirically seeing what happened before, when the, when at a different time the, the forest got denser, we have to say this is not the case quite the contrary, probably what will happen first is that Larix Malini will expand because it will out compete Larix Iberica. Larix Malini will probably not be endless but it will this is the first thing that will happen. So this is really, if you look at the the paleo data then combined here with a model to also explain what we're seeing. It is counterintuitive, but this is the process so if you look at the process, you see that actually, it's not just it cannot be explained by just a change in the distribution according to maybe what you think this species needs. Yeah, so this is this is an example of a very high resolution analysis. And we have now so that you see here we see the effect of the glacial early glacial, the glacial refuture we had only severe and then with a higher population density we have more Larix Malini so the direct climate effect will be the change of population size will be the change of population of the forest and thus probably actually the an expansion of the range of Larix Malini really counterintuitive to what you might think. Now, this was only a single little PCR based marker. And in the next step we then went and looked at how much genomic information so how much of a whole genome. And this was for chloroplast genomes so it's not yet the complete nuclear genome, but the chloroplast genome so this is a single circular molecule. It has a size of 120 kb it is paternally inherited. And it surprised or not surprisingly but fantastically, it was actually possible to recover full chloroplast genomes through a this is the technique here this is this hybridization capture so this is a different type technique to the to the PCR in which you can have many, many little pieces of DNA, with which you construct baits we call them so we have these, these are these baits, and then the baits stick to the DNA in your extract and then you pull them out actually with magnetic beads. And then you can sequence that. And from this we could actually enrich our extract for this Larix chloroplast genome and we could for one thing so this was first of all only on four samples. So this is done by Louisa Schulte at the Alfred Ligner Institute, and she has now also continued since since I have left and is looking into large scale changes. And I, yeah, so this is this this is to be continued but this was the first experiment there, and it was fantastic that we could see this so this was really one of these, the first times that we managed to get such genomic genome scale data from environmental DNA. Yeah, so and it was also possible to track these different types so the glimpliny at Malini and Siberia. Now this looks like you can do anything you can get all sorts of data however I must now a word of caution here, you cannot always get everything you can get an ideal situation so this is, if you want to look at mammals in the DNA you can get this is an ideal data set where you get a lot of mammals here you see and you can track pastoralism through time. This is by Charlene Jege Kovex, but there is also a kind of a typical or common result that you do not find any of this but you find a lot of different worms earthworms. And we have a project in which we're also trying to do something similar now with plants mammals and then what we tried is mammal proxies because we thought okay if the mammals are not so easy to get. Maybe let us check if we can get the mammal proxies. First of all these coprophilus fungi so fungi that live on done. And that are also used as a microscopic proxy so you can look under the microscope and find spores of these fun. Then also endoparasites and extra parasites and this is was then done tried by Peter Saber who's a postdoc in my group. He constructed again this is a bait set so this again not PCR but a bait set, and he tried to do this, but unfortunately, he did not get anything better with these proxies than with that they're looking at the mammals so what you see this is a nice. This shows actually what you actually have if you just sequence it without any enrichment the DNA that you have what you have is you have most of it is unidentified, and then you also have bacteria are key yeah you have mostly bacteria then some viruses. You have a lot of vascular plants, this is also why this works on I see so this and these are then the eukaryotes and here again most of it is vascular plants, then fungi are actually not so bad unicellular eukaryotes so all the algae are also not so bad, then some parasites some fish birds surprisingly and also a little bit of mammals, but in general, it was unfortunately not easier to actually get the mammals, more securely by not looking at the mammals but looking at the, at any of the other So this was all on terrestrial environments and I'm going to talk a little bit about aquatic environments so this is actually where I started my PhD, this was a study in in the. Rift Valley in Kenya, which is the eastern branch of the East African Rift system and there are the interesting it's interesting and fantastic for a number of reasons but one of the things is for me working on lakes. So I'm in this area that are not very far, and they are extremely different in conditions. So the chemistry of each of these lakes is extremely different, even though there are quite close to each other so this makes them really really good natural and there are all sorts of things among them, for example the history of what happened there so what I looked at is a record actually of a very, very small crater lake like so muchy, and this then only went back 200 years I must say I try to go much further in a different work at the time. This was so this was during my PhD, where nothing was known about how to do this. So and then a lake Bulgaria and also this probably around 5000 500 years, and this is on. So again, haplotypes of a little organism of a rotifer. And what I saw there and that was also really very fantastic that I got different types, different haplotypes different types of the same species and partly also different species. And so here this there and this is in space, also with these little colorful dots, the colorful dots indicate different types of this rotifer this brahionus rotifer that lives in all of these lakes but they're actually different types of populations. And not only were there different types so we could also relate them to things that happened in the poor in this case also really natural changes. So it was there was a volcanic ash here so there's a sudden population turnover, probably the crash of one population and the establishment of another population, then all through here we have this light blue type. And here there's a period in which the lake level gradually declined. And from this, there was a gradual turnover in these haplotypes. And this is kind of this so this is where I started and then for some years I worked more on these terrestrial organisms, especially on plants. You saw also in one slide why they're quite easy to get there's a lot of plants DNA and in the sediments. And now I have I now at Lake Constance I'm attempting to look at both. So Lake Constance is here. It's in the south of Germany and bordering Switzerland here in the south and Austria. It's a very large Perry Alpine Lake. And it has time here at the limnological Institute that's also where I'm sitting right now. Unfortunately, it's not as sunny as on this picture it's really a very lovely place as you can imagine. This is the building. Some of these so these are some of our little boats that we take to the lake to do some research and here is the university beach which is also quite a luxury we actually have a beach next door. Unfortunately, yes today is not the weather for this but Lake Constance is not only very beautiful and lovely to live by but it is also very interesting so it has a very dynamic postage of history. The current lake so there were also previous lake phases but the current lake started forming 17,000 years ago when the at the time of the deglaciation so until then there was a glacier covering what is now the area of the lake. So now it's a thousand years before present, the lake was much much larger and actually extended into much of Switzerland into the complete Ryan Valley. And this is the current size of the lake so now it is, it is much smaller. So a lot of things happen there. And another thing that happened we had very, we had relatively intense settlements around these lakes so these are the so called pile dwellings. So these are all around the Alps. This is a picture of a reconstruction this is a museum that is that you can visit around here sorry. All these little pile dwellings. And so these are basically these touched houses that were built partly into the lake on the, and partly on the on the shore. There are many. There are many many of the sites archaeological sites and around Lake Constance they're also really a lot. So this is it's it was intensely used very early on, basically. There was an intense use of the resources of the lake, and there was an intense settlement directly on the shores of the well intense for these time periods of course now we have a completely different level of size of human populations. So, and this is exactly it so in the 20th century. The lake experience a major eutrophication. These is this curve here shows the phosphorus levels and these are the. Yeah, this is also something that this is the way that I think got to know about the lake when I was not yet. I've never been here but as a child I heard about this within Germany Lake Constance has this terrible eutrophication, and it's a major ecological catastrophe. And the thing here is that there was actually, they managed to reverse this trend by setting up very strict measures for reducing the pollution to the lake, and for reducing the phosphate levels on the lake so this is a case where the lake and a lot of Perry Alpine lakes have exactly this history. There wasn't this eutrophication and now the trend is reversed so that means the phosphorus levels are down again. And here by in the 2000s, they have really dropped. And of course the question is what happened in between what happened to the lake and we have here at the Limnological Institute, a so called RTG a research training group which is a graduate program for PhD students on this question of response resilience and reversibility of lake ecosystems in which we are looking intensely at the lake and the first thing that we did we looked at these last 100 years and this was done by an Ibrahim who's now a postdoc in Vienna and not here anymore but this is, I'm going to show one of the results of her PhD, which was really lovely so what you see here is an extensive data set you don't see all the things that she did but this is quite an extensive data set for three different with three different markers one for microbial eukaryotes so all sorts of different algae, one specifically a reaction specifically for diatoms, and then one for cyanobacteria and within these curves. So this is this just this is not a quantity this is actually the number of different species that we found right so this is the diversity these are, or these are indices calculated from the diversity, ie the number of different species that we found so what the first thing was, there was a decline of diversity during the time of eutrophication and this decline is reversible. However, there is something that was not reversible and that is actually the change in the genetic makeup of the communities. So here you see this is a NMDS of ordination technique, you see, first of all these light blue colored forms are the are the communities or the samples cluster in this area of this light blue and then the samples of the eutrophic and then the full eutrophic phase cluster over here, and the real eutrophic samples. They are in a way, again, away from the the eutrophic but they are not identical to the, to the samples to the, so the community composition is not identical to what was there before. We have more analysis on this more in depth than in this paper and actually in many cases, the species or the genera that have that are now in the lake are the same. In many cases, not in all. So there might be a functional reversibility but on the level of genetic community, it is not the same anymore so this is, this is a very nice example of the trajectory of an ecosystem simply changing the way that we can bring this back, obviously, functionally, maybe yes and at the moment also the the lake is again an oligotropic lake but it is definitely not the same community that we had before. Another interesting thing that we saw is that there is a that the main breakpoint of the community change happened before we humans became aware of the eutrophication. The actual monitoring started in the 1950s and 60s, because people then saw something's happening with the lake somehow the fishes that everything it's looking different and so on. However, and this was kind of what humans saw what the fishermen saw and everything. So then this is when actually the monitoring started and when there were, when, when, when scientists got involved more involved in this. In fact, when we look through the sediment course we see that the that's a major breakpoint of community change actually already happened in the 1930s and 40s. So this means that this, this was something that we didn't even that was not that did not come to the attention, right of the humans. However, in terms of what it means for example to an algae and an algae or maybe a fish or so in the lake. This was probably the lake had already changed at the beginning of the 20th century and we have now also looked at plants and looked at some other things there and it's really the beginning of the 20th century which is actually the intensification of urbanization around the lake that is when a lot of things happened in different parts. And this is basically this is for the last 100 years. Now, as I said we have this intense human, relatively intense human use already for thousands of years and in between. It was very, very intense for example in the medieval. You see here on the, on the left hand this is a picture of photo. This is a pouring platform and in the background. This is the island of right now, which is, it's an, there is a big monastery there, and it is now also intensely used for for vegetable farming and it has been intensely used for this for for hundreds of years. So there's an intensive agriculture and this has already been the way since basically many hundred years so this. So it's a it's an important medieval site with with a number of churches and so there was really a lot of a lot of human use of the lake in different times and so now we're looking exactly at this through time, and we're seeing where we have to core so one is actually one is here this is. This is the island of right now that I just mentioned, and over here. This is, this is the, this, this little town is called Alansbach this is Constance where we are, and the Swiss site is called Kreuzlingen. So there's this one core which is in an area of probably intense human use so there's also a new lithic site here, one of the very early pile dwelling sites on this area then we have intense use in the medieval we know that and also in Roman Constance the name is a Roman name right of our city here, so it has been used quite a lot and over here we have another core, which is in the upper lake Constance and in an area that is very likely not under the same pressure this is the upper lake which is very large and very deep, and we'll have. So we hypothesize at the moment, who will have experienced previous periods of future vacation in a much lesser state, and a much, probably much later. However, so we have to course right and we're working on these 11,000 and around 13,000 years of age and I'll tell you a little bit about the first data that we have from this and this is, so we have data from both but only one of the courses properly dated now and this is, this is it this is this from upper lake Constance, and the first data that we have now are the plants and they are already really interesting. This is 3,000 13,700 is the low estates that we have. And we see a lot of. Yeah, we see certain woody taxa already present in this time, and then an increase here of shrubs, first of all, and then a bit later on the trees towards the beginning of the Holocene so this is really, we see, this is really when it got warmer and the shrubs are earlier and this is climatically driven that is all clear and this is these are the first things that we see and then we see especially now in the herbaceous plants, we see a next big change and this is then between, as you see, 1,200, and then also maybe if we go over here or to car 4,200 so this is late neolithic and early bronze age. And we see a tremendous increase in diversity of the herbaceous plants exactly here. They all appear exactly around this area around this time. So, or most of them right so and this is really a clear indication. We think now and I think this will not change of exactly this increased human land use and this is the forest clearing. This is pastoralism and this is probably also the beginnings of agriculture so there are also we have Poacy, which could also be cereals we don't know that yet because the marker that we use does not, we only see that these are Poacy so this could be cereals right so this has to be looked at in more detail and this is happening right now so Yi Wang is the PhD student who's who's doing this at the moment, and she's preparing so we will complement this then with the data from what actually happened in the lake that is the that is one big question that we have here, and the other is also with with with other taxa so also pastoral animals, and, yeah and generally everything so also with with a with a non PCR based method to to obtain the sequences. So yeah so this is, I think that we will get a lot. This is what I can show you until now. And I hope that very soon so by the end of the year will will have a more complete picture of us. Now for the end of the talk, I just like to just show you a little bit about where and where I think we should be doing this or we could be doing this and what we can get from these from these types of records. You saw that I also worked a lot in the Arctic. I had I also worked a lot in the tropics so these are these the F and the L is frozen terrestrial deposit lake sediments kind of of the size that I personally have worked on. And you see a lot of it is actually in the in the Arctic. The reason for this is exactly because it is so cold that the DNA just keeps long right it's it has a good preservation, whereas in the in the tropics. The preservation is much lower. However, it is not non existent we have preservation. So what we can get and this is something that we're beginning to realize more and more also in the ancient DNA world. So initially, people working with ancient DNA just wanted to go, you know, as old and spectacular so as possible and this is then in usually really best, let's say best possible in cold places. However, we can go to to to warm places. We can also get quite a bit of, of data but the easy analysis is performed on the in a time scale of 100 to 1000 years and now this is maybe a pity. So if you think about it, what we actually want to know just about like how humans have been changing ecosystems and vice versa how changing ecosystems have affect humans. The time scale that is most important for us as humans and human history or for us right now in the society that we live right now is of course exactly this, maybe the last 100 to 1000 years right so we have exactly these the all of these the the different, the different things that we can look at. You see that actually towards the lower end so that we have the DNA preservation potential. And if we look at all the things that we can actually look in detail that nonetheless, there's there's quite a lot. So I really say I really this is I find this very really important that we don't just think this is something like to be conducted in these, you know, fancy environments where no one can get to like an article or so. And, but we can just do it basically anywhere and with nowadays relatively relatively little effort and get a lot of very interesting data on on changing ecosystems in relation to to human use of the environment. So yeah, this is basically the more or less the end of my talk. Now, for one little slide now with perspectives, the methods are strongly developing so I showed you a little bit of non PCR based methods or shotgun sequencing this is exactly where we're going to do more because this DNA sequencing techniques are just becoming more and more affordable. And we're getting more and more data so the thing is if you do not enrich first you have to sequence much much more. But that is becoming more and more doable and then there are these enrichment techniques which are also really good to use. So we can get full genomes basically or full at the moment full organella genomes and finally what we need if we really want to do this we need reference genomes and this is something that we're lacking for most organisms of course for humans we have this and for many cultivated plants where we have started to get these genome but for many other species we don't have this yet so then we have the data but we can cannot yet do anything with it. So this will definitely change within the next, I don't know, five to 20 years or so and then I think that we can see much much more even of what was happening in the organisms in the world. Yeah, and that is the last. That is my last slide and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you very much aura for your presentation. Can you hear me. Yes. And for me it's a very, very unknown word because I'm a geologist. But it is a very fascinating word, because it is very interesting to understand how we can reconstruct the history and the dynamics of single species using DNA is very, very beautiful word. I don't know if let's see the chat if there is some. Yes, there are there are questions. Can you see the chat. Yes, yes, I see the chat. Yes, just a congratulation for your presentation and other people other teachers are surprised by the incredible potential potentiality of the environment. Yes. I don't know if somebody is not shy and to ask a question and also the potential research for the future is incredible. Yes, it is and I'm very much looking forward to it. So every time we start with it with a new record I'm always a bit apprehensive about whether it will work again. Whether we will actually get good data and so on. But in most cases we get very lovely data so we're not through now yet with these lay constants course but I think that we will get very, very interesting data and I'm really looking forward to see what actually happened in the lakes. This is a subject that we have not looked at a lot at all yet you know this, the question of, we know a lot about changes in terrestrial environments. So yeah, human land use agriculture, cutting of trees and so on but what actually what this then also means for the aquatic environments where we actually get our samples, because humans have always lived and do always live by the water. They always use water they have always been using water. Yes. So yeah so this is something that I'm really really looking forward to this is. Yeah, I'm excited to see the next there was a question. The study expanded on how much time I think I imagine how much time I in the past. You mean how much I have been working on these things. No, that how long can we go back. How much. I don't know the question is the study expanded on both. Well it depends. So the first question, the course of lay constants for which we're now getting the data. We took them one of them in 2019 the other in September 2020, and the PhD students have been working on them for a year now and now the data is coming back. Yeah, so, so it's all, you know, doable and in a PhD. So, yeah, this that's that's the one so and of course we were completely delayed because we got the first core in 2019 and then we didn't have a lab at the beginning of 2020 and then it didn't come until summer 2020 because everything was closed so so we started late. I personally have been working on this. So my PhD is already more than 10 years ago. So I have been working on this for a long time and it is basically I would say only now that as a, as a community as a scientific community, we have in a way, you know, really got the hang of it and know what we can do. So we knew this. And the other thing is that only now people have become more interested. Now, there's a lot of interest in our topics but and we haven't done it that long right other other I think other scientific areas take maybe a lot longer to establish to become like to actually develop data. So and that's that's the first thing so the other question is, yeah, the the time span so there is the oldest record of Lake sedimentary DNA actually goes back 130,000 years. So this is super super old and for most lakes this would not be the case simply because lakes are not that old. So the oldest record of sedimentary DNA is around 500,000 years. This is a study on Greenland of sediment below a glacier. So right at the beginning of the, when the glacier was formed. So this is why the state is now but otherwise. So it can be very old and it were it very very much depends on the on the preservation conditions so as I said so for example and if I go back to the slide here. And it's on the slide maybe this. So, for example, we had a core from from Cameroon I'm not sure which you're seeing now. Anyway, and this and there, we could not go we took one sample it was a test one sample at the beginning and one sample 1000 years ago and at 1000 year old sample there was nothing left. So it's, it depends this was low this was a low land lake in Cameroon but then, for example, other lakes from Africa for example from high mountains in the Bala Mountains in Ethiopia. We have a record that definitely also goes back multiple thousands of years. So, yeah, it's nonetheless, if you go to like the Arctic or Antarctica then the. In a way ends this because everything is just deep frozen. Oh yeah. Okay, yes, there are more questions. Last question. Yes, yes, my field. Okay, you read it. Yes, yes, yes, about how to enrich it. So yes, so there are the classical way to enriches by by PCR by polymerase chain reaction so this is, you have these two primers and they, they stick to the DNA and then with this the the part in between is is prolonged and then this is done again and again and again. But so this is the this is the PCR, but the enrichment technique is I can go back to the slide maybe. Here it is. So what you have you have so from one side you have your DNA, just, just the DNA, and to enrich it then you can make these little baits. In this case, this is from homemade baits you can make a long part of DNA, you can also have this synthesized by a company. This is this depends but so in this case you have this. You have your own you break it into little pieces, and you make so this is just DNA, the DNA that you are looking for, and you, you. You have to create certain adapters that will then make these baits stick to magnetic beats. So you have this little piece of DNA, and you. You, you put it together with your with the DNA and then the idea so with single stranded DNA so you denature everything. It becomes single stranded, and then your base and the single strands those that actually fit to the base will stick. And then you can capture, and then you can release again through the nature to through the nature and you relate you release this again, you elude from from the from the base. And then you can capture again so you can repeat this you can do two rounds of capture for example. And this then doesn't. So what you get you enrich it you do not have a complete. It's not just what you wanted, it will still contain all the bacteria and all the stuff, but what you wanted, you will have more of it you will have up to 10% more of it or so but so it's, you know, it's a, it's an enrichment but it's a small enrichment. But it is, it is very effective. If you know for example from a shotgun data set that you have a certain species, but you've only got like three different strands of the species in this pool. Then you can go and you want to find out about the history of the species, you can go and you can start enriching this and then you can get this more genomic DNA. Was that clear, more or less. Yes. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. Okay, your contribution. Bye bye. Okay, move the. Okay, now we have 20 minutes of break and see you at 10 past 11. So welcome back from the coffee breaker. And now we have the, the, the third and the last presentation of the today session about climate is by Elena so plucky is correct the pronunciation. From just to slide big university that maybe I don't know if I said correctly. And Elena is a senior scientist. She studies very different topics, such as the Mediterranean climate change from the past to the future. The paleo climatology climate reconstruction, a climate change impacts and on society story in the past, and also extreme events. The present day presentation, I don't know Elena, can you share the screen because I authorized you to share the screen. The screen is the medieval climate anomaly and Byzantium, a review of the evidence of a climatic fluctuation economic performance and society change. Can you see my screen. Yes, you can click on the full perfect. Okay. Thank you very much for coming here and to share with us your knowledge, your research. Thank you Francesca. I'm really glad being here, and sharing with you some, some information from some recent work we have been doing. Actually, you will see that I'm going to use quite a lot of them of the data of the sources of information that have been discussed. And what is extremely important when we are doing this work when we are working in the past is to be aware that there is almost everywhere, several sources of uncertainty. So, not only in our textual data on documentary data, but also the proxy data, as well as the model data, which, because we are looking into the past, we do have to take into consideration the different four things that are not kind of resolved when we are looking in the past. So, keeping that in mind, we are trying to do the best we can to try to understand how periods in the past, what looked like, how were the links the connections between climate variability and change, and societal well being. So, I'm going to start with with a short information on the climate of the Byzantine lands on the, during the medieval climate anomaly, trying to understand what were, what could be the impact of climate that would affect the Byzantine state and the Byzantine economy, and try to go and look also a little bit on how was this economic performance of Byzantium organized, how can we receive information, how can we combine all this, all this information. And then some additional work on the on the pilot climate, which is the pilot climate evidence that we are using, and which is indeed used to, to interpret and then try to identify how these conditions have influenced their medieval Byzantine area. And climate models, as well, we are going to use here, and also trying to bridge finally the links between the climate and societal change. Let me give you just. This is this just a global map where we can see where we have a different Mediterranean climate region so it is not only the area that we know well the Mediterranean basin. But we do have Mediterranean climate in also other parts of the world, as you can see, both in the southern and the, and the northern hemisphere. In all cases, we are talking about areas that have specific characteristics. They are almost 100% anthropogenic biomes have been so much modified by humans. They contribute to with a mosaic of habitats, and also very detailed and very heterogeneous human societies, but have almost 100% modified and transformed landscape. And we do know also very well that these are the areas that that are actually considered climate change hotspots. So there's a lot of work done on the, on the civilizations and the, and the environments in these areas. And actually, we could just say that the Mediterranean is something like of a, of a single world of interconnected habitats. And please excuse the sound before it's home office so there's a bell ringing suddenly that I cannot control. So, just a couple of words about the climate indeed in this area, this is the corner of the world we're going to look at. And considering winter, a winter the cold but also at the same time that the wet part of the year where we see that we have a smaller gradient between the coastal areas, and the mainland the inland areas, especially where we have higher latitudes and complex horography this is where we are expected indeed to see much the larger differences and the lower temperatures during the winter time. What you can also see though down here is that we have a quite high temporal variability, and towards the end of the period we're looking at we do see an upward trend, especially during the last 30 years. However, this is not this significant. At least, it has not been statistically significant characterized. When we look then to precipitation, which is indeed why we are making the selection to this October to March, we see this very characteristic precipitation button. We have a high spatial variability. We can see that the western coast of the peninsula has received very, very large amounts of precipitation of rainfall, which is indeed connected to the morphology of the area and the circulation that is moving this humid air masses that meet finally these mountain ranges and precipitate over these parts, over the leeward of the mountain. So you see that we have a strong gradient from the west to the east in both parts in both peninsulas. What do we also see as well it's a very, a very high temporal variability so we see changes in this winter precipitation from the mid 20th century. We do see a statistically significant decrease in trend, which is around 10 millimeters per decade. If we go now to the summer, you can see a totally different picture of course, very well known for the Mediterranean, the warm and and settled temperatures. We see that we have again this, this, this well known temperature gradient connected to the distance to the, to the distance to the, to the sea. And of course we have the strong influence of the orography. We have what we can see here is, when we look into the, the temperature anomaly and here again, it's, it's an extended, let's say it's the warm part of the year. We see that we have a statistically significant summer warming, some point 13 degrees per decade, which are even more important if we're looking at the last decades of this period. And the second characteristic, very, very characteristic climatological climate of the climatological characteristic of the area, which is a dry summer so very low rainfall amounts through compared to any other part of the year. We see that in some parts of the, of this area, we may receive even less than 10% of the total precipitation during the summertime. We usually receive precipitation, either by fast passing thunderstorms and then locally, local, local events. What we could say about the in general about the climatology of this piece and team lunch, we have temperature and precipitation, which are indeed during the whole year. They are characterized by higher spatial and temporal variability, which is connected, of course, not only to the atmospheric circulation body is also connected to the very high complexity of the orography of the morphology of the area. When we are considering these large changes, these large differences in such a small area because actually this is a small area, then we may consider that this complexity would also have an influence to the impact that are connected to changes in climate. So what we are doing how we're trying to do identify causal relationships and that between climate and socio economic changes and to do that we are taking. We're going to do a very, very detailed to interdisciplinary and then comparative analysis, and we are taking advantage of all information that is available for that period of time, and from coming from very different sources. So what is this medieval climate anomaly, I'm sure that you have already heard several times about that but I would like to take care that previous IPCC assessment report with the extensive information on the on the on the paleo climate of the earth so during the medieval climate anomaly, we had multi decadal periods where in some regions were as warm as the meat 20th century, and in other regions was as warm as in the late 20th century. So what about the period back in time where we had favorable conditions we had regionally at least warm up periods, which I have been considered also several times as a question mark, whether they are crossing or not the current, the present change the present time trends. Actually, what is making very different that period back in time to today's is that we did not have around the globe, a synchronous change, as we do have now, plus, what is extremely important is we didn't have the space that we are experiencing nowadays. But we had climatic conditions we had atmospheric circulation that was favorable or was bringing warmer periods in different parts of the world. So, what this was what was really happening though in this Byzantine period, how was the Byzantine during the medieval climate anomaly. We knew from historical sources that was an expanding society. Economy was really thriving, and there were already complex political and cultural institutions, which were quite advanced for a pre modern society, compared to other parts of the world. And that gave that had given, of course, the Byzantines the advantage or the luxury if you like, that they could write, and they could materialize information and materialize descriptions and on on different aspects on different aspects of that were observed that during these periods, and then at the same time they had the possibility to go and and investigate what was really happening during these periods. So, what we are looking at actually is a period of prosperity this ninth to the 20th to the 12th century, where we were at the time, after a recovery from the this so called dark ages, which historians actually do not use any more dark ages as as a description because it's simply misleading. And this period brings us up to the fall of Constantinople to the Latins in 1204. And of course we are looking mainly at the northern regions of the eastern Mediterranean. So what we have done, we have put together all interesting events in the history of the Byzantium, because when we are discussing the links between climate change climate variability and and societal and economic impact. So we do have to take into consideration as well. Also other events as political as worship, taking place, and of course, how were the conditions also within, but also outside the empire. The Byzantine society at that time was, as already said a pre modern pre industrial society, which was largely dependent on agriculture for its prosperity for its food. We had an extensive serial cultivation that made more than 50% of the annual intake of its inhabitants. We had also at the same time wine and olive cultivation, which was actually foods that that were available to almost all cultural all societal strata. And this meant that weather variability and tax income had something to say, had links with these agricultural output. What I didn't say it's that, and I would like to add here is that there were already at that time, specific areas that were that were experts that they were dedicated to the production of wine and olive oil. Which means that any changes in any unfavorable weather conditions that could influence this production of wine and olive oil could actually bring the area into an economic economic difficulties. I said already before the cereals were the major impact the major intake for the for the inhabitants for the Byzantines. And what we have here is the links between those most important crops, and also the climatic conditions that could on the one side support a good harvest, but also on the other side could threaten the, the harvest and could finally bring up to the crisis from subsidence crisis to do social instability. So we can see for example that cereals as already said the most important regular adequate spring rainfall could actually ensure a good harvest, while very cold winters and spring drought and even more some early summer heat waves could be problematic, could actually cause large issues to the harvest of cereals. Wine had of course a different period had where sunny summers are those that are, as we all know, are expected to be those conditions to have a very good harvest. And, but, and while threatening conditions with the spring frost and also very bad, very strong summer heat waves, and even worse, some late summer rain that would actually go fall exactly on the, on the period where the the the grapes are about to to become ready and and then the rain could actually absolutely destroy them. So olive trees on the other side, characteristics, characteristic tree, characteristic plant of the area, its favorable dust can definitely go with dry climate, just require some some spring rainfall, and even if the plants are really strong and can, can, can support low temperatures during the winter, prolonged frost and that even going below minus 10 degrees could definitely damage the harvest. The information we are using for the study of the Byzantium economic performance have different are different types. We have historical, either narrative or archival data, and we are receiving information either from the taxation system, or even information about population about the cultivated lands about the production and the different scales, and usually we have indirect or direct mentions on on economics on finance. It is quite important to know that in this response in this respect, we have not only quantitative but also qualitative information, which requires a totally different study of these of these evidence, while at the same time we have a very different chronological precision that could go from some decades to do longer periods. We use also archaeological coin finds what I'm going to show you just, just later. And we are discussing of course about a monetary circulation on an area where these finds are coming from. They are usually discussing the representing a couple of decades. And as they are of course the rental periods as we were using them from the, the head of the coins. There is also information from sites. So about settlements coming from archaeological surveys, and we also receive information from one analogy so while environmental evidence, providing information on the conditions on the climate in direct climate conditions that are coming from the abundance or lack of plants but at the same time, but also give us information about how much anthropogenic plants have been have been used in those areas. So, for example, we can describe whether we have a higher percentage of serial pollen. So we are expecting to have higher anthropogenic plants, which are translated from the serial pollen has been abandoned has been representative of the area for several actually hundreds of years. So this is the area we are going to to look at, and I would like to show you this monetary circulation. So actually coins that people are losing in the market in the, in the urban areas, and according to their frequency according to the amount that we find that we can say, whether we have a stronger or a less strong economic financial situation in the areas. So also information about settlement density and that from archaeological surveys and in this case, we are looking mainly into the central to to southern Europe, as, as we can see here. And, and this is a really interesting is relative changes in population numbers. And that compared to levels we're trying indeed to consider how changes on these in the population the inhabitants is taking place. And here as well as also in the previous evidence, we have to take into consideration that uncertain the place a very important role and we always have to take it. We have to take it into consideration when we are drawing conclusions and trying to come up with with our research output. And a very important, finally a very important source of information is the other proportions of serial pollen. So what we see here is how things have been changing with the serial point that were found in them. There are several logical excavations and, and, and after the laboratory work, the lab work that is taking place or what we can see is that relative change of these of the form of serial pollen and that in different parts in the, in the business team and buy it. We have the possibility, and we have actually, if you would like as well the luxury to use textual evidence, documentary textual evidence that is coming from the medieval Byzantine region. And then the very big advantage of those those data is that we have a very high temporal temporal resolution. We do not have always a mix of temperature and precipitation effects from the descriptions that are found in documentary evidence. We can cover all months of the year while when we're looking on more specific periods, if we're looking, for example, or three rings or plants we do know that we are, we have, we are, we have representative information only for a smaller part of the year, where actually these are proxy are sensitive to these to the sub annual variability. We do have a very high sensitivity to changes to any anomalies on deviations from wind conditions but also natural hazards and fortunately we have quite a lot of information from the business team. However, there's quite a lot of disadvantages that have to be more in mind taking care is that we are we have usually is continuous and heterogeneous so it is almost impossible to come out with with a long reconstruction from from these data. And we do always have to take into consideration that they were human the human impact is quite strong here so which is actually what we always have to do when we are looking on on historical on historical evidence or descriptions of events. Because we have to consider how far there the right there was from the area and the time of these descriptions. What is the personal concept the personal perception of these events, and, and also whether our historian tends to overestimate or underestimate the descriptions that the conditions that that are found in these stories. When we have taken all this information that the one is the latest has put together for quite some time from the business in area from the business in periods, we can see that we have some specific characteristics as these are the information that we receive. Here, we have taken the information of the historical information that we try to make pictures out of those. And what we can always say is that we have quite some specific characteristics of those events. We do receive mainly information that is describing anomalous conditions. We don't find descriptions that are describing, we don't find any records that describe normal condition so actually everything that we find has something special, because it's attracting of course the attracting the attention of the writers. And of course, as you can very well see, most information is coming from the capital of the Byzantine Empire. So everything is around Constantinople and any adjacent areas. So we're using this information as well, together with our, and should be here, together with natural proxies, paleoclimate natural proxies from these areas so what we have is a selection of specific and well recovered information so we use annual surface temperatures, we use free rings, we use also sphilia thams from several caves in the area, as well as information from barbed lakes, and as you can see from the different descriptions. So the information we receive on the climate it's very heterogeneous, and is also referring to different parts of the year. So we have been trying, we try to bring all this information together, in order to, in a way that we can compare or at least see how the climate variability how climate was was barring in that part in the past. And finally, we are using climate models. So what we have here it's a semi five, do see five early and earth system models so large scale, and, and also rather course data but we are also using at the same time. The original climate model so much finer resolution, taking into consideration, more realistically the topography of the area as well as the very, the very well known coastline of the eastern Mediterranean so trying to to receive the information on as representative as possible for the area taking it. So I would like to go then to, to this 12th century, where we know for the southern breeze that the 12th century so 1100 to 1200 was one of the most prosperous times. As you can see here we had demographic expansion, and at least over central to and southern Greece. We had a significant monetary exchange as you can see from the blue line here in our finds from the coin finds, while we also know that during that time, the Byzantine pressure was relatively strong in terms of political power. So, during this period we have information from our paleo climate evidence and we do know that we have relatively high sea surface temperatures, which is, of course connected. I would not say that this is just temperature that is coming from during the summertime we are talking about especially these, these marine marine proxies do represent longer periods of the of the year so we are expecting this higher temperatures. We can see from tree rings over the the northern, northeastern parts that we had relatively low precipitation as can be seen here. The time is evident as well over the, the lakes. Actually, we can see that these effective moisture which is the main variable that these caves are providing shows drier conditions. And actually, this is also supported by the the ESM here for the 12th century, as well as form the original climate model, as you can see, as well, that we have an extended actually winter dryness and considering that winter it's a very important season for the area. We do understand the significance. What we also know is especially when we are going further to the towards the end of the period, we see here on much more detail than still it is not as high resolution as we would like. So we can see that when we are here over this southern part of Greece, the extended central and southern part of Greece, we see some dry periods. So we know, though, from our data from our serial data is that in central Greece and and Macedonia, the economic growth when we are discussing that with in the form in the form that the form of of serials is actually continuously increasing so we didn't have any change throughout the whole century, although these unfavorable conditions and you were supposed to see something here. Yeah, finally, while we also see that we had these actually no reduction in the in the population that we find even more to the north of Greece. So what we could say is that we are talking about a resilient recent in society, at least over the south and Greece, and that for the 12th century, although the relatively unfavorable climatic. If we go then to the other side of the Aegean, and we look exactly at the same information, considering that these these these data these these proxies are actually on both parts of the of the Aegean sea. We do know that after the Turkish conquest we had dryer conditions, and as is visible from from these proxy data across the whole Mediterranean Byzantine Empire. And we had also an important decline, if we can see here, especially over southwestern Anatolia of the agricultural production as something that has started already before the, the beginning of the 12th century. And actually comes the question that what was pushing what was making this change happening. Already before they, they, the 12th century, and why did Western, why Anatolia has has was behaving so very different when we are comparing to just the other part of the Aegean. So what we do know is that already before somewhere at the end of the 11th century, we had the invasion, invasion of the Seljuk tribes, and also a strong migration of two common nomads in true set into central Anatolia. That had as a result as strong economic instability and to Anatolia and even collapse of the economic system. Considering these events and how this is has taken place. The question is then going a little bit further. We do see that we have the Seljuk tribes migrating invading and also two common nomads migrating into the area. And our next question and our next question now next research topic is, what would be actually the reason that these Seljuks were expanding, why did they invade the parts, the eastern, the eastern parts of the of the Byzantine Empire, and actually was was there any was climate also playing a role to these expansion. So, I hope that I could try to, I showed you how paleoclimatic and archaeological historical approach could work together and address paleoclimatic events. And assess at the same time, the impact that these may, may have to them to the societies of complex of the complex Byzantium. We have made a comparative use of value models and combination with pilot climate information and societal evidence, where all natural proxies sexual documentary proxies together with information from archaeology can actually provide additional knowledge or better knowledge of the drivers that the climate system, or the triggering actually that the climate system has provided to the to this coupled climate society system. What we have to take into consideration and this is extremely important is that we have to be very cautious when we are interpreting all these input as we have a high complexity and the high spatial temporal heterogeneity. While all archives, either they are historical archives, archaeological finds, or a natural proxies, but even more, but in this well as climate models, they do. They are, yeah, one would say rich in in in uncertainties and these we have to take them into consideration, when we are describing and when we're joining our conclusions. What we could say is that the 12th century at the climax, let's say for the Byzantine for the for the for the Byzantine Empire was characterized by that considerable agricultural productivity. We had substantial monetary exchange and demographic growth, the conditions that the climate conditions that characterize that period was warmer temperatures, high precipitation variability that was differently represented in the in the in the in the in that smaller corner actually of the world, we had the dry, drier winter conditions but we also saw that that that was not really affecting that the Byzantine socio economic system. What we could say is that climate was a contributing factor to these changes that were observed, while the Byzantine socio economic system was vulnerable to climatic changes but that was in the cases where we have also considerable internal or external political and military pressures, as we could see them the totally different behavior the totally different resilience that was shown by them, the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire. And actually, we could say that the resilience of the Byzantine society to the to the impact of climate variability show us that we cannot consider only direct links between climate and then socio economy, but we have always to take into consideration those indirect links these additional factors that that actually prepare a resilient or destroy and the the the status of a society. So what we saw areas with very similar climatic conditions had quite different behavior, quite different socio economic impact experiencing that that were experienced during actually one century. And we thought I would like to thank you very much for your attention, and I would be happy to take any questions. Thank you very much, Elena, for your presentation. I was really impressed by the huge amount of of archaeological and palo climatic data to reconstruct the for climate reconstruction. And also there is a take home message that climate can change our social economic future. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, Francesca, while we were while we were doing this work on you could you could have possibly seen it already that this see this work cannot be done just by by climatologists, paleoclimatologist but it's a test to be a very strong collaboration by all those disciplines that are related because it's extremely important that we do consider that we can we do not have the knowledge we cannot just we cannot judge whether historical documents should be taken as they are, or whether we would like to have, or whether we should be careful on the on what is written and what information we receive from those so. And also to get this this wealth of information as you said already, and that was that is a very important aspect. And what we were actually considering and this is what we're trying to do now is how could the different types of societies because we were talking about the pre modern society still complex. So, we, it was not just agriculture there were many more aspects to be taken into consideration, but still it was not as complex as our current society. So, the question was, how much can we provide advice, how can we provide information and advice to current conditions to current policy makers. And so, in a way of, this is what we had faced then, when we had less, less complexity, and how this would be translated in current conditions and actually we are preparing an environment for policy panel, where we are looking at those aspects. So, what you said for the future, yes, it's extremely important how climate can affect. And also, okay, we are forced, we are forcing nature, because there is an anthropic contribution that in the past was missing. Exactly. Okay, any questions from the weapon. Just comments, very nice comments for your presentation. And there is one question, can you give us a plausible explanation of the resilience you talk about about the, the information on them for the business in society. I do not know if I could say explanation of the resilience. I mean, what we could say is that at that time, and that specific period and that specific area. We could see that changes that were coming from, I mean, resilience to the climate change, changes that were coming from climate variability did have an impact. However, the impact was not as large to to destabilize the socio economic system of the western part of the of the Byzantine Empire. There was something that we would see from the totally different changes, the totally different data that that we found, as far as socio economic changes were concerned, while on the other side we had a very strong external external force that was already weakening that part of the of the society that part of the Byzantine Empire, which means that they were actually stronger or or additional factors that were reducing the resilience of the of the Byzantine Empire over the over Anatolia. So that is how we could consider that the resilience on the western part was there, because the system was well established. There were nothing there was nothing coming to to force even more an external factor, which was not really taking place on the other part of the of the of the Byzantine Empire. Okay. Any other question. No. So, Elena, thank you again for your presentation. And this is the program for tomorrow. And I don't know if I should look want to add some information. No, see you tomorrow at two at 10 past two. European time and on practice. So thank you very much to teachers and especially a special thing for speakers for this very interesting presentation, and I will send you an email for sending us the PDF presentation for teacher to just to put in the web. Thank you very much. Bye bye to everybody. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thank you very much.