{"id":6699,"date":"2026-07-08T10:16:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T08:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/2026\/07\/08\/impact-reconstruye-12-000-anos-de-historia-climatica-del-sur-de-tenerife-para-mejorar-las-predicciones-del-futuro\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T13:16:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:16:44","slug":"impact-reconstruye-12-000-anos-de-historia-climatica-del-sur-de-tenerife-para-mejorar-las-predicciones-del-futuro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/2026\/07\/08\/impact-reconstruye-12-000-anos-de-historia-climatica-del-sur-de-tenerife-para-mejorar-las-predicciones-del-futuro\/","title":{"rendered":"IMPACT reconstructs 12,000 years of climate history of southern Tenerife to improve future predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Malpa\u00eds de Rasca Special Nature Reserve, in southern Tenerife, has become a veritable natural archive for reconstructing the climatic history of the Canary Islands. A multidisciplinary team led by the geologist Margarita Jambrina<\/a>, coordinator of the Environmental Geochemistry and Global Change group at the University of La Laguna and the geoarchaeologist Natalia \u00c9g\u00fcez<\/a> The Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology, Higher Council for Scientific Research, has managed to recover a sedimentary record that allows us to go back 12,000 years to analyze how the climate, ecosystems and human presence on the island have evolved.<\/p>\n

The research is part of the project \u201cClimate Impacts and Environmental Crises during the Anthropocene on the Terrestrial Biodiversity of Tenerife: Predictions and Evidence from Paleorecords (IMPACT),\u201d funded by the CajaCanarias Foundation and the \u201cla Caixa\u201d Social Welfare Foundation, which recently concluded. Its objective was to understand how climate change and human activity have transformed island landscapes and to use that knowledge to improve future climate projections.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>According to Jambrina, the results have far exceeded the project's initial expectations: \u201cOur idea was to analyze the last 2,000 years, coinciding with the first human settlement of the Canary Islands, but we have been able to go back 12,000 years, meaning we have the entire Holocene.\u201d During this period, it has been possible to study both climate variability and its interaction with human activity, as well as the environmental dynamics prior to the arrival of the aboriginal populations.<\/p>\n

The work combines two main lines of research. On the one hand, the paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic study based on natural sedimentary records and, on the other, the archaeological analysis of ancient Guanche sediments from the Malpa\u00eds de Rasca, one of the areas with the highest concentration of sites. The collected samples were subjected to sedimentological and geochemical studies, including the analysis of soil micromorphology, stable isotopes, and lipid biomarkers, which have allowed for a highly accurate reconstruction of past environmental conditions.<\/p>\n

One of the most significant findings has been the identification in southern Tenerife of the footprint of the so-called African Humid Period, the episode that gave rise to the so-called Green Sahara. \u201cWe have been able to reconstruct how this important climatic event was also recorded in southern Tenerife,\u201d and they have determined that between 12,000 and 8,200 years ago, the area experienced wetter conditions than it does today, and detected episodes of rapid climate change, such as the events of 8.2 and 5.5 ka.<\/p>\n

These results are significant because there are hardly any paleoenvironmental studies of this magnitude for southern Tenerife, Jambrina points out. Furthermore, when compared with similar research conducted by this group in other areas of the archipelago, it has been found that the ecosystems' response to climate change was not uniform.<\/p>\n

The archaeological dimension of the project also provides new data on the human occupation of the Malpa\u00eds de Rasca. Excavations have uncovered evidence of domestic and livestock activities carried out by the area's earliest inhabitants. Among the findings are the remains of domestic animals and fecal biomarkers associated with livestock. "We have identified a small pig tooth and evidence related to the presence of sheep." This data shows that not only were there shell middens indicating marine exploitation, but also other activities.<\/p>\n

Sedimentary records have allowed researchers to reconstruct more recent events. The research has detected the presence of pesticides used in intensive agriculture during the 1940s, some of which are now banned by European regulations. \u201cWe are piecing together the story centimeter by centimeter,\u201d explains the researcher from the University of La Laguna (ULL), explaining that \u201cin the surface layers we find evidence of recent activity, while at greater depths we can reconstruct what the landscape was like thousands of years ago.\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the main challenges of the project has been to develop a robust chronological model that allows a precise time period to be assigned to each of the analyzed sedimentary layers.\"\"<\/a> The researcher points out that \u201cin geology, having a good age model is fundamental to being able to determine with certainty when certain climate changes occurred.\u201d She also indicates that having a continuous sedimentary record that covers the entire Holocene is especially valuable for understanding natural climate variability and validating the models used to project future scenarios.<\/p>\n

The main lesson learned from the research is the adaptive capacity of island systems in the face of environmental changes. \u201cThe island landscape has proven to be resilient to climate variations, which is why it is so important to understand how it reacted in the past, as this can help us anticipate how these territories might respond to future climate challenges,\u201d he states.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Malpa\u00eds de Rasca Special Nature Reserve, in southern Tenerife, has become a veritable archive\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,35,6,37,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biologia-animal-edafologia-y-geologia","category-departamentos","category-destacado","category-investigacion","category-portada-ull"],"acf":[],"primary_category":null,"featured_image_thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/10\/Margarita-Jambrina-i-Natalia-Eguez-d-300x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6702,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6699\/revisions\/6702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}