Environmental Transformations linked to Early Human Occupation in Northern Australia

How have interactions between climatic change, human activities and other disturbances over thousands of years shaped the landscapes we know today in Australia? Existing lines of evidence from palaeoecological and archaeological sources point to significant changes to biodiversity, vegetation cover, and fire frequency since the arrival of people into Australia sometime between 50000 to 40000 yr BP. The extent to which humans influenced or overrode natural processes through time remains unclear. High-resolution, multi-proxy data in an innovative vegetation and megafaunal reconstruction will provide the first quantitative assessment of the response of Australian tropical savannas to a range of natural and anthropogenic influences.