The Central and Southern Apennine (Italy) during OIS 3 and 2 : The colonisation of a changing environment

Mountain environments are made by a number of ecosystems, some of which are very sensitive to climatic change and may be close to survival limit. With a vertical thermal gradient of 0.6°C per 100 meters, for instance, a 1°C fall in temperature causes a 170 m drop of the tree limit, which will leave vast areas deforested. Soils will soon start to be eroded, and rocks to be broken up by gelifraction. Once the vegetation and soil cover are lost, plants do not easily recolonise karsified expanses, and short-lived mild oscillations hardly have any effect in such environments. Therefore, a limited climatic change may have dramatic effects, which are registered both in the geological and in the archaeological record.