Climate and Environmental History and Seminar: Historical forest cover and timber availability

Historical timber is a great source for studying land use changes related to wood utilization and forest management. It provides further insights on how those land use activities have impacted vegetation cover, composition and diversity. This talk presents results for the last 1000 years and Central Europe of a comparison of precisely dated tree-ring samples from the economically and ecologically most important tree species (spruce, fir, pine, oak) used to construct historical buildings with pollen-based regional land cover reconstructions. It will give insights into changes in species abundance and forest structure that mirror forest exploitation and land cover changes. In particular, species selection for construction as well as land use changes which parallels phases of stagnating or booming building activity, e.g., during the Black Death (1346–1353) or after the Thirty Year’s War (1618–1648) will be discussed.

Geographer Dr. Andrea Seim is Researcher at the Chair of Forest Growth and Dendroecology, University of Freiburg, and at the Department of Botany, University of Innsbruck.

The seminar is held in english.

Zoom-link for this seminar: https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/65573473206

Convenors: Charlotta Forss and Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist. For more information about the seminar, please e-mail: charlotta.forss@historia.su.se or fredrik.c.l@historia.su.se.