Late Medieval Ars Memorativa Treatises from Central Europe

Understanding how climate change influences mountain lakes both directly and indirectly by modifying catchment processes is central to ongoing and future research. Special emphasis is now placed on problems associated with the interactions between climate change, the melting mountain permafrost, enhanced pollutant release, and ecosystem health. The general objective of the project is to reconstruct the changes in the ecotoxicological state of a high-alpine lake ecosystem over the last ca. 10,000 years caused by warming-related increases in metal inputs from an active rock glacier. This goal will be achieved by means of chironomid analysis (Diptera: Chironomidae) of the Holocene sediment records from a lake with a rock glacier and a pond without a rock glacier in the catchment situated in a periglacial environment in the Ötztal Alps, South Tyrol, Italy. Analysis of changes in the chironomid assemblages and the incidence of chironomid mentum deformities from these records will be used to define and compare periods of unfavorable ecotoxicological situations in both water bodies during the Holocene. The general temperature trends and the major warming events responsible for the past elevated mountain permafrost discharges in the study area will be identified based on a compilation of different palaeoclimate archives available for the region. The study of morphological mentum abnormalities in chironomid subfossils for the assessment of past environmental toxicity associated with metal influx from melting alpine permafrost will be innovative for the Alpine region. Special attention will be placed on studying the trace metal bioaccumulation in living chironomids and the metal biomagnification through the contemporary benthic food chain in the lake affected by recent metal fluxes from mountain permafrost.