An inter-regional (Central Europe, Iberian Peninsula, New England, and Central Alaska) comparison of lacustrine sediment archives of Late-glacial age is a crucial approach to disentangle local and global characteristics of abrupt environmental changes that occurred 12,900 years ago. This period is marked by a rapid climate cooling over much of the Northern Hemisphere. This cooling initiated an 1100-year-long cold period in Earth's history known as the Younger Dryas.
This inter-disciplinary project aims to improve our understanding of the dynamics of global environmental changes at the onset of the Younger Dryas across the North Atlantic region. It also seeks to strengthen the current scientific collaboration between the Czech (Charles University, Biology Centre of the CAS) and the US teams (University of Maine, University of Alaska, Fairbanks), while enabling the exchange of state-of the-art methods and research approaches.

Principal investigator: Dr Daniel Vondrák, Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague

Co-investigator: Prof. Evžen Stuchlík, Institute of Hydrobiology, Biology Centre, Czech Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice

Co-operating US partners: Dr Nancy Bigelow (University of Alaska, Fairbanks), Prof. Stephen A. Norton and Prof. Andrei V. Kurbatov (University of Maine, Orono)