Lecture Dr. habil. Patrick Roberts: Uncovering Jena and its environment through time

Urban population increase and associated pollution and environmental impacts have been seen as key markers of the ‘Great Acceleration’ in human impacts on the Earth system since the 1950s. As the proportion of the human population living in urban settlements continues to increase, understanding these interactions is critical to charting sustainable courses through the Anthropocene. However, interactions between urban settlements and their environments have a long history that needs to be understood to provide more reliable baselines and insights for contemporary urban research and policy. In Jena, for example, there are suggestions that the surroundings of the city have witnessed significant fluctuations in forest cover, hydrology, and pollution over the past 1,000 years. In this talk I show how we are combining the study of trees, sediment cores, laser analyses from the air and within the lab, quantitative history and archaeology to uncover new insights into the history of Jena and its surroundings that can provide us with a new lens on what we live today.