“Paleo-environmental and modeling insights into Mediterranean fire-vegetation interactions in response to Holocene climate and use change”

My research lays on a broad project, aiming at generating the first comprehensive reconstruction of the Holocene fire dynamics in order to define past climate changes. In the frame of the project my work will focus on analyzing pollen samples and macrofossils (e.g. stomata and needles from Conifers) extracted from new sedimentary records mainly from Sardinia (Italy). Data will be combined with additional records from charcoal and Chironomids analyses and processed with the LandClim model (ETH, Zurich), to underline the importance of past regional to local fire activity, climatic variations and forest dynamics. Finally, the ultimate goal of the full project is to build a dynamic landscape vegetation model able to predict forthcoming fire-vegetation interactions in response to climate change. Participating at the Ecology and Evolution doctoral School will allow me to combine my former educational background with the current project.