Bolivian Amazon SEasonality (BAMSE)

Seasonality affects the occurrence of droughts, floods, and extreme events by regulating the distribution of rainfall over the year.

Future projections suggest enhanced seasonality, with increased risks of extreme droughts and floods and immense costs for societies, particularly in the tropics.

However, large uncertainties remain and almost no information about seasonality exists on prehistoric timescales due to a lack of proxy methods.

The Bolivian Amazon is highly sensitive to seasonal variability and was one of the earliest cultivation centers globally from around 10 200-years ago. Yet, past climate dynamics and their effect on humans in the region are completely unexplored.

I aim to fill these critical knowledge gaps using cutting-edge biomarker techniques and an interdisciplinary approach of organic geochemistry, climate modeling and archaeology.

By developing novel biomarker proxies, BAMSE will reconstruct rainfall and temperature patterns over the past 14,000-years, providing the first high-resolution insights into seasonality in the Bolivian Amazon, building upon experiences from my PhD work on Sumatra. This will reveal how seasonal shifts influenced ecosystems and early human settlements.

By integrating biomarker data with climate models, the project will also clarify the role of large-scale drivers like ENSO.

BAMSE bridges the gap between climate dynamics and human history, significantly advancing the research frontier on climate seasonality.