Millennial evolution of the Mediterranean sea-level: a story of mud, archeology and geophysical modelling.
- Date: Jan 15, 2025
- Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Matteo Vacchi, University of Pisa
- Location: Online
- Host: Human Palaeosystems Research Group
- Contact: kutowsky@gea.mpg.de
Sea-level rise has been the major driver of coastal evolution since the end of the last glaciation. The reconstruction of the sea-level evolution is relevant to gauge how climatic forcing may influence the rates of future sea-level change as well as to undestand the complex interplay between coastal landscape changes and human occupation since the prehistoric period. The Mediterranean region has been a major focus for sea-level studies since the 60s. These studies analysed a wide range of proxies which allowed to robustly define the variability of the Mediterranean sea-level evolution over the last millennia. These studies often coupled geological investigation with archeological data that were used to tune geophysical models of sea-level changes. This resulted in an improved picture of the climatic and anthropic drivers of sea-level changes and coastal evolution in the different regions of the Mediterranean Sea.
About the speaker
Matteo Vacchi is a coastal geomorphologist. After a his Phd in Earth Science (2012, University of Genova, Italy), he moved to France as postdoctoral researcher (University of Aix-Marseille and Montpellier III, 2013-2017) and in the UK where he served as Lecturer at the University of Exeter (UK) in 2017-2018. Since 2019 he is Professor at the Department of Earth Science of the University of Pisa (Italy)
The main fields of interest are on palaeo-environmental reconstructions and on the millennial response of coastal environments to the climate modifications. He has a parallel interest in geoarchaeology where he investigates the past trajectories of coastal environments and their impacts on the historical and pre-historical coastal communities. On these topics, he authored and co-authored more than 90 ISI papers since 2010.
In the last years, he was involved in several research activities along the Atlantic Africa, Persian and Caribbean coasts. However, his major geographical focus has always been the Mediterranean area where he was in charge of research projects developed in collaboration with Universities from France, Morocco, Greece, and Spain.