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      Ancient harbour infrastructure in the Levant: tracking the birth and rise of new forms of anthropogenic pressure

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          Abstract

          Beirut, Sidon and Tyre were major centres of maritime trade from the Bronze Age onwards. This economic prosperity generated increased pressures on the local environment, through urbanization and harbour development. Until now, however, the impact of expanding seaport infrastructure has largely been neglected and there is a paucity of data concerning the environmental stresses caused by these new forms of anthropogenic impacts. Sediment archives from Beirut, Sidon and Tyre are key to understanding human impacts in harbour areas because: (i) they lie at the heart of ancient trade networks; (ii) they encompass the emergence of early maritime infrastructure; and (iii) they enable human alterations of coastal areas to be characterized over long timescales. Here we report multivariate analyses of litho- and biostratigraphic data to probe human stressors in the context of their evolving seaport technologies. The statistical outcomes show a notable break between natural and artificial sedimentation that began during the Iron Age. Three anchorage phases can be distinguished: (i) Bronze Age proto-harbours that correspond to natural anchorages, with minor human impacts; (ii) semi-artificial Iron Age harbours, with stratigraphic evidence for artificial reinforcement of the natural endowments; and (iii) heavy human impacts leading to completely artificial Roman and Byzantine harbours.

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          Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100.

          Scenarios of changes in biodiversity for the year 2100 can now be developed based on scenarios of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, climate, vegetation, and land use and the known sensitivity of biodiversity to these changes. This study identified a ranking of the importance of drivers of change, a ranking of the biomes with respect to expected changes, and the major sources of uncertainties. For terrestrial ecosystems, land-use change probably will have the largest effect, followed by climate change, nitrogen deposition, biotic exchange, and elevated carbon dioxide concentration. For freshwater ecosystems, biotic exchange is much more important. Mediterranean climate and grassland ecosystems likely will experience the greatest proportional change in biodiversity because of the substantial influence of all drivers of biodiversity change. Northern temperate ecosystems are estimated to experience the least biodiversity change because major land-use change has already occurred. Plausible changes in biodiversity in other biomes depend on interactions among the causes of biodiversity change. These interactions represent one of the largest uncertainties in projections of future biodiversity change.
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            Early urban impact on Mediterranean coastal environments

            A common belief is that, unlike today, ancient urban areas developed in a sustainable way within the environmental limits of local natural resources and the ecosystem's capacity to respond. This long-held paradigm is based on a weak knowledge of the processes underpinning the emergence of urban life and the rise of an urban-adapted environment in and beyond city boundaries. Here, we report a 6000-year record of environmental changes around the port city of Akko (Acre), Israel, to analyse ecological processes and patterns stemming from the emergence and growth of urban life. We show that early urban development deeply transformed pre-existing ecosystems, swiftly leading to an urban environment already governed by its own ecological rules and this, since the emergence of the cities.
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              Ostracoda and foraminifera as short-term tracers of environmental changes in very polluted areas: the Odiel Estuary (SW Spain).

              The analysis of 17 cores collected in the Odiel Estuary (SW Spain) permits delimiting the recent evolution of this zone during the past decades and the influence of natural and anthropogenic factors on the distribution of Ostracoda and Foraminifera. In the upper estuary, the coincidence of acid waters, prolonged subaerial exposure, and coarse sediments may explain the absence or the disappearance of these microorganisms during the industrial period (1966-1985) in the major part of this area. In the lower estuary, sedimentary evolution and industrial wastes are the main factors influencing both the distribution and trends of the populations of these two groups. Finally, the main changes observed in the marine estuary are due to the sedimentary effects of the construction of two banks and the dredging of the main estuarine channel.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Sci Rep
                Sci Rep
                Scientific Reports
                Nature Publishing Group
                2045-2322
                03 July 2014
                2014
                : 4
                : 5554
                Affiliations
                [1 ]CNRS, Laboratoire Chrono-Environnement UMR 6249, Université de Franche-Comté , UFR ST, 16 route de Gray, 25030 Besançon, France
                [2 ]Institut Universitaire de France, Aix-Marseille Université , CEREGE UMR 7330, Europôle de l'Arbois, BP 80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence cedex 04, France
                [3 ]Institut Universitaire de France, EcoLab, UMR 5245 CNRS UPS INPT, Université Paul Sabatier-Toulouse 3 , Bâtiment 4R1, 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse cedex 9, France
                [4 ]Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton , Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BF, United Kingdom
                Author notes
                Article
                srep05554
                10.1038/srep05554
                4080198
                24989979
                dbcb1733-f062-4f0c-b21d-d41d38a4165d
                Copyright © 2014, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

                This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

                History
                : 18 March 2014
                : 13 June 2014
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