Rose Wilkinson

B.Sc. (Hons) in Geography (University of Liverpool).

M.Sc. in Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Reconstruction (University of Manchester).

Supervisor: Dr Jeff Blackford, Dr Jamie Woodward and Dr Phil Hughes

There has been some effort made to explore the extent of refugia in the Mediterranean but efforts have concentrated on long-term records from sites in Greece and Italy . Results suggest that pollen records respond more sensitively to climatic change than both Greenland ice cores and marine isotope records. Furthermore, with few endeavours made into the study of areas lying between northern Greece and the western borders of Italy exploration in areas, such as Montenegro is vital to international research being conducted into plant refugia during glacial / interglacial cycles. The data gathered in Montenegro will be of relevance not only to current Mediterranean environmental records but also the archaeological record of Palaeolithic people in The Balkans as palaeolithic man moved through the north east Mediterranean before accessing northern and western Europe.

As current Mediterranean pollen transfer functions concentrate on semi-arid areas, new functions will be developed for the high precipitation mountainous areas of Montenegro . The temporal transfer functions will have applications across the mountainous areas of the Balkans and Mediterranean . Both surface samples and long core will be retrieved from the area surrounding Lake Plav and the lake itself enabling a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the area and development of temporal transfer functions. The contemporary record of conditions and pollen assemblages will be utilised to identify the vegetational and environmental changes that have occurred during past glacial / interglacial cycles.

The primary research aim is to identify the major vegetational changes associated with rapid climate change of glacial / interglacial cycles during the Quaternary using a long pollen record from the currently unexplored mountains of Montenegro . Secondary aims include, utilising the data gathered to provide a record of Quaternary vegetational refugia during glacials in Montenegro ; identifying the implications vegetation and sedimentological records from lacustrine sites have on the timing of glaciations; exploring possible links between vegetational refugia in the area and Palaeolithic human migration.