In Italy, evergreen holm oaks (Quercus ilex) and deciduous sessile oaks (Quercus petraea) experienced a synchronized establishment pulse starting at the beginning of 1400s CE, consistent with a release from anthropogenic pressure following demographic collapse associated with the Black Death outbreak (1347 CE) and its following waves until the 17th century. Radiocarbon dating of the oldest-looking individuals of each species revealed similar tree-age distributions across sites located at the extremes of the forest elevational gradient: Montecristo Island (100 to 500 m a.s.l.) and Aspromonte mountain (1,100 to 1,800 m a.s.l.). Montecristo, with its favorable coastal conditions, showed a pronounced post-1400 CE recruitment peak, while the mountainous Aspromonte region, at harsher high elevations, required a more extended and delayed period of recruitment. The extreme longevity of these two unrelated oak populations is enabled by different functional traits and resilience mechanisms, highlighting an ancient rewilding event spurred by human tragedy.

Long-lived trees support biodiversity at multiple scales, maintain ecosystem functionality, serve as natural archives, and hold cultural and aesthetic value. Despite their importance, the maximum longevity of many tree species remains poorly understood, limiting the design of effective conservation strategies. Challenges in obtaining reliable tree ages are commonly represented by natural wood decay, sampling obstacles, and indistinct or absent annual rings, which prevent or limit the application of tree-ring analyses (dendrochronology). Radiocarbon dating, increasingly accessible and applicable to all species, provides a flexible approach to study tree longevity and its ecological implications. For tropical trees, which mostly lack annual rings, radiocarbon dating is one of the few reliable methods to determine tree ages. Even in sections of the calibration curve characterized by oscillations and plateaus, statistical methods such as wiggle-matching or deposition models may be used to reduce the range of probable tree ages. In this paper, we illustrate a mismatch between tree-ring and radiocarbon-derived estimates of the longevity of angiosperm trees, with tree-ring maximum ages often half of those obtained through radiocarbon dating. We also present the most up-to-date estimates of maximum longevity for 42 arboreal angiosperm species worldwide, based on a literature review. Radiocarbon results indicate that ages of 400-500 years are a common feature of many broadleaved species, while exceptional old ages are restricted to a small minority of individual trees. Our results underscore the need for increased efforts to locate old and ancient trees, investigate their role in ecosystem ecology and ensure their protection.

The reconstruction of flood frequency beyond the Instrumental Era is challenging and mostly based on historical sources, but it rarely covers more than the last 1000 years when abundant documentation is preserved. To investigate the long-term trends in flooding and obtain insight into current climatic changes it is necessary to extend these data to a larger number of rivers beyond the Instrumental Era and available period of historical documentation. In this paper we reconstruct the paleoflood record for the Roman Period of the Serchio River (Auser in antiquity, located in Northern Tuscany, Central Italy) using geoarcheological data. The complex hydrological evolution of the river and the development of the important cities of Lucca and Pisa on the river bank allowed an important collection of data, showing a prominent peak in flood activity during the 1st century ce, which seems to correspond to an increase in regional rainfall interpreted from speleothem proxies. A secondary peak is present in the 6th century ce, which corresponds locally with an increase in precipitation recorded by speleothems. The phases of increased flooding, when compared with present-day synoptical meteorological conditions, probably developed during a period of negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Index, and it is partially supported by comparison with paleoproxies for NAO. These findings confirm that an extensive collection of geoarcheological data, supported by geological and geomorphological investigation, represents a powerful tool to be integrated with historical data for the reconstruction of floods. The concomitance of local paleohydrological proxies can help in disentangling the origin of the signal from other causes.

Forests are essential for climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. While the thermal buffering role of oldgrowth forests is well known, the long-term cooling benefits of restored forests in strictly protected areas remain poorly understood, particularly in the Mediterranean region - a biodiversity hotspot severely affected by climate change. In this paper, we examined summer maximum canopy temperatures using satellite observations across a Mediterranean forest landscape in Tuscany (Italy) during the period 2013-2023. Our analysis focused on topographic and forest attributes influencing temperature variations among evergreen oak stands under different IUCN management categories (Ia and V) compared to coppiced stands outside protected areas. The Ia site, legally established in 1961, is the first strictly protected reserve in the coastal Mediterranean. We observed measurable differences in canopy cooling at the mesoclimatic scale among strictly protected (IUCN Ia), protected landscape (IUCN V), and productive forests. Unmanaged stands with taller structure exhibited cooler conditions, with average summer maxima of 33.3 degrees C in strictly protected areas versus 35.4 degrees C in actively managed forests. Linear regression and GAM models suggest that terrain (elevation, aspect, topographic position index), forest structure (canopy height, tree cover), functional traits (canopy moisture content, EVI) and forest edge effects were the main factors affecting canopy maximum temperature. Even after accounting for topographical and stand attributes, productive forests were 1 degrees C warmer than strictly protected areas, underlying specific properties that emerge as these stands recover towards more natural stages. Our findings confirm canopy temperature as a robust proxy for assessing forests' biophysical role in moderating localized heat and evaluating restoration and conservation outcomes. This study underscores the urgent need to restore Mediterranean forests through strict protection, ensuring canopy-level thermal regulation and forest resilience. We advocate for area-based conservation and rewilding as essential nature-based solutions that integrate climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection within sustainable landscape management strategies.

Understanding Earth's changing climate is a crucial challenge. However, the available time series of direct measurements are often insufficient to fully capture climatic processes that unfold over centuries and millennia. Combining history and geology can fill this gap. Focusing on rainfall and flood events, this study proposes a multidisciplinary approach to integrate the sedimentary and meteorological records of the Magra River (Northern Italy), using historical data as a bridge between the two datasets. A pristine record of near shore river-mouth deposits, covering the last thousand years, is analysed, interpreting sand layers as flood events. The results are merged with a coherent historical record of floods and river activity spanning six centuries and instrumental measurements spanning two centuries. The timing of the deposition of the sand layers interpreted as flood events is reasonably consistent with rainfall data and historical records, testifying to the reliability of the river mouth sedimentary record as a proxy for river discharge. The complete dataset and the comparison with other basins of the northwestern Mediterranean clearly indicate common floods during the 1150–1200, 1350–1400, 1550–1590, 1720–1820, and 1950–1970 intervals, all periods characterised by predominantly negative phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Both climate and human activity play a role in ecosystem change, and studies examining the relationship between climate, society and the environment need detailed data from all three sources. Too often, the historical archives used in such studies are not from the exact location and period as the paleoecologic and climatic data. We analyze one of the oldest and most complete set of medieval Italian records of land use and compare that with a new paleoecologic reconstruction from Lucca, Tuscany, and independent records of climate reconstructed from tree-rings and speleothems to identify causal factors of landscape change when comparing climate, society and environment over the last 2000 years. We identified three environmental periods of abrupt permanent vegetation change at times of both climatic and societal change: (1) The early 7th century following the end of the Late Antique Little Ice Age and the structuring of Lombard society in the wake of the Roman Empire; (2) The early 11th century associated with the Medieval Climate Anomaly but also new institutional land tenure rights; (3) The early 15th century, following the Black Death and coinciding with the Little Ice Age as well as the early Renaissance. For each period we found that while climate may have played some role in human actions, environmental change was most clearly explained by new societal structures controlling land use. We argue for additional local studies with in-depth historical records to create more nuanced explanations of the complex relationship between society, climate and environmental change. A network of studies across a region would help develop more convincing long-term causal connections between climate, society and environmental impacts.

Some arboreal monocotyledons, such as the dragon trees (Dracaena sp.), can develop impressive trunks (>5 m perimeter) through a lateral meristem, but their ages are difficult to determine. We report here a series of calibrated radiocarbon (C-14) dates obtained from a stem section of Dracaena draco (L.) L. subsp. draco growing on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. This radial section, about 40 cm long, was cut on October 18, 2023, from a large (similar to 60 cm diameter) branch that had fallen off the main stem of a privately owned dragon tree. In order to apply C-14 calibration, and given the lack of clearly defined growth layers, we collected 33 sequential samples at similar to 1-cm intervals along this radial section. A first attempt at wiggle-matching resulted in a calibrated dating of similar to 1787 CE for the innermost sample. Because we only knew the spatial distance, but not the time interval, between C-14 dates, we further applied calibration tools commonly used for sedimentary sequences. The Poisson-process deposition model in the software OxCal resulted in a calibrated age for the innermost sample of 1776-1798 CE (2 sigma). The classic and Bayesian age-depth deposition models available as R packages dated the innermost sample to, respectively, 1775-1862 and 1768-1813 CE. Because the branch was at a height of similar to 3 m from the ground, and its section did not reach the pith, our results suggest that this dragon tree was similar to 300 years old in 2023.

The olive grove is a globally recognized symbol of the Mediterranean landscape, yet its origins, ecology, and linkage to different cultures remain inadequately understood, especially in the Central and Western Mediterranean. To fill this gap, we provide new insights into the early exploitation of olive trees in Eastern Sicily (Italy) since the Early-Middle Bronze Age (18th cen. BCE, 3700 BP), through the integration of novel high-resolution palynological analyses of lake sediments at Pantano Grande (a.k.a. Lago di Ganzirri), paleoclimate proxies, and descriptions of socio-cultural changes from historical and archaeological sources. The study site is located along the Messina Strait: a trade and transit route used by seafarers to enter the Tyrrhenian Sea from the Eastern Mediterranean since prehistory. Vegetation changes, including the propagation of olive trees and other forms of land-use or rewilding, are found to be coincident with changing socio-cultural patterns over the last 3700 years. Our results suggest anthropogenic propagation of olive trees coinciding with three cultural stages: (i) Early- Middle Bronze Age (Castelluccio and Thapsos cultures); (ii) Roman times; (iii) Late Modern times (Kingdom of Sicily). This paper establishes an earlier date than previously recognized for the beginning of landscape transformations driven by olive tree exploitation in Italy, representing the second oldest evidence in the Central Mediterranean. We hypothesize that cultural exchanges between Sicily and the Aegean in the Early-Middle Bronze Age have promoted the use of wild olive trees in the Messina area. At that time, olive trees could have been used for various purposes, including fruit production, but also wood and forage for animals. The development of olive groves followed a gradual, multi-stage process in the Central Mediterranean, with largescale cultivation appearing only in modern times. Although human impacts have contributed to the decline and local extinction of wild olive tree populations, it has also ensured the success of selected genotypes, enabling their adaptation to a wider range of environmental conditions.

Combined natural processes and human activities shaped the late Holocene landscape history in many Mediterranean regions. This is especially true with areas subjected to specific human interest, such as coastal areas morphologically suitable to the establishment of harbours. Here, we test the hypothesis on the location of the Roman harbour Portus Trajectus in Peloro Cape (NE Sicily, Italy) and describe the evolution of the area over the last 3700 years through lithostratigraphic, geochemical, meiofauna and microfossil analyses performed on a new sediment core recovered from the coastal salt marsh Pantano Grande (aka Lago di Ganzirri). The age-depth model was developed on radiocarbon dates and geochemical fingerprinting of two tephra layers. Results indicate that the area underwent dramatic changes ca. 650 bce. The anthropogenic impact of Greek colonies may have contributed to modifying the coastal environment of Peloro Cape due to their widespread impact on natural resources. This happened at many localities in the Mediterranean, indicating the magnitude of impact of the Greek colonies over the landscape. According to our results, it is unlikely that the current Pantano Grande basin was used as a harbour in Roman times, although the presence of a harbour in the nearby Pantano Piccolo marsh cannot be excluded. Pantano Grande had been isolated from the sea for more than 2000 years. Human intervention in the 19th century halted that isolation and provided the background for the ecological, economic and social functions the salt marsh performs today.

Understanding recovery times and mechanisms of ecosystem dynamics towards the old-growth stage is crucial for forest restoration, but still poorly delineated in Mediterranean. Through tree-ring methods, we reconstructed the return of a tall canopy after severe human disturbance in a mixed beech ( Fagus sylvatica) ) and silver fir ( Abies alba) ) forest, located at a mountain site in the southern edge of both species' range (Gariglione, south Italy). The primary forest was extensively harvested between 1930 and 1950, removing up to 91 % of the biomass. Growth histories, climate-growth relationships and time-series of growth dominance in Gariglione were compared with a network of protected mature and old-growth beech forests distributed along a wide elevational gradient in the same region. We found that the renewed tall canopy of Gariglione is mainly composed of remnant trees, which include uncut trees and saplings, and the post-harvesting regeneration mostly represented by fir. Canopy beech trees reached maximum basal area increment (BAI) in the 1970s, 40-50 years after cutting. Then, beech BAI shifted towards negative trends in phase with drying climate (PDSI), while fir maintained a sustained growth until 2000. This growth asynchrony between the two species conferred community stability over the last decades. The network comparison highlighted the common negative impact of summer drought on high-frequency growth signals of beech in south Italy. However, analysis of long-term mean growth trends indicates decreasing BAI limited to Gariglione beech, revealing relevant differences due to site ecology and its interactions with legacy effects of past management in driving growth responses to climate change. Indeed, lowland mature beech forests showed increasing BAI in the last decades, while primary high-mountain forests displayed a remarkably stable low oscillating growth. In all the Mediterranean forests we studied, large and old trees showed a marked growth acclimation despite ongoing climate warming, demonstrating the effectiveness of landscape rewilding.

Photo 1. Cultural landscape (upper panel) vs. seminatural forest landscape (lower panel) in southern Italy. The cultural landscape in the upper picture (Campotenese plain, Pollino National Park) depicts a mountain rural environment similar to that characterizing the study area (Lago del Pesce) in the 10th century. In the 14th–16th centuries, the demographic collapse due to the Black Death outbreak led to rewilding and increased forest cover and biomass. The seminatural landscape in the lower picture is from the core area of the Aspromonte National Park, where the Italian Forest Service (today Carabinieri Forestali) restored since 1960 a mixed forest of Fagus sylvatica, Abies alba, Quercus petraea, and Pinus nigra subsp. laricio. Photo credit: Gianluca Piovesan and Jordan Palli. Photo 2. Rewilding in a secondary grassland in southern Italy (Pollino National Park). Mountain pasturelands below the timberline have been historically created and maintained through the use of fire and livestock grazing. Once these pressures are reduced or removed as a consequence of socioeconomic and demographic changes, ecological succession takes place, and the woody vegetation increases. The image above is shown the first phase of secondary succession with low-growing shrubs of the pioneer species Juniperus communis, acting as a nurse plant that facilitates the establishment of pioneer trees. Photo credit: Jordan Palli. Photo 3. Luxuriant silver fir (Abies alba) regeneration under mature beech trees (Fagus sylvatica) in southern Italy. Silver fir is a vulnerable forest species that creates mixed forests with beech in the Mediterranean mountains. Centuries of intensive land and forest use (fire, grazing, and coppicing) have reduced silver fir populations and promoted pure beech stands in most of the Apennines. The protection ensured by National Parks and Natural Reserves is today contributing to the expansion of silver fir without any human input. Upper panel: Spontaneous silver fir regeneration in an old-growth mixed forest in Sila National Park. This natural forest habitat has high carbon stock and high biodiversity and characterized the landscape around Lago del Pesce during late Medieval and Modern times. Lower panel: Rubbio Natural Reserve (Pollino National Park) where the restoration activities promoted by the Carabinieri Forestali is allowing silver fir to regenerate in pure beech stands. Young silver fir trees do not produce pollen and their recent recolonization of seminatural beech forests still eludes palaeoecological reconstructions. Photo credit: Jordan Palli. Photo 4. How to reconstruct and study past ecological processes? Fossil pollen studies from natural archives, such as lake sediment, reveal landscape ecology through time. The sediment stores and conserves microscopic pollen grains produced by local and regional plants and provides a picture of past vegetation and ecology. Left panel: Sampling operations in Lago del Pesce: A mountain pond within the Pollino National Park (southern Italy). Right panel: Professor Scott Mensing extruding a sediment core from a lake in Italy. Photo credit: Michele Baliva and Jordan Palli. These photographs illustrate the article: “Historical ecology identifies long-term rewilding strategy for conserving Mediterranean mountain forests in south Italy” by Jordan Palli, Scott A. Mensing, Edward M. Schoolman, Francesco Solano, and Gianluca Piovesan. Published in Ecological Applications. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2758

We investigated the dendroclimatic response of a Pinus heldreichii metapopulation distributed over a wide elevation interval (from 882 to 2143 m a.s.l.), spanning from low mountain to upper subalpine vegetation belts in the southern Italian Apennines. The tested hypothesis is that wood growth along an elevational gradient is non-linearly related to air temperature. During three years of fieldwork (2012-2015) at 24 sites, we collected wood cores from a total of 214 pine trees with diameter at breast height from 19 to 180 cm (average 82.7 & PLUSMN; 32.9 cm). We used a combination of tree-ring and genetic methods to reveal factors involved in growth acclimation using a space-for-time approach. Scores from ca-nonical correspondence analysis were used to combine individual tree-ring series into four composite chronologies re-lated to air temperature along the elevation gradient. Overall, the June dendroclimatic response followed a bell-shaped thermal niche curve, increasing until a peak around 13-14 & DEG;C. A similarly bell-shaped response was found with previ-ous autumn air temperature, and both dendroclimatic signals interacted with stem size and growth rates, generating a divergent growth response between the top and the bottom of the elevation gradient. Increased tree growth in the upper subalpine belt was consistent with the consequences of increasing air temperature under no drought stress. A positive link was uncovered between pine growth at all elevations and April mean temperature, with trees growing at the lowest elevations showing the strongest growth response. No elevational genetic differences were found, hence long-lived tree species with small geographical ranges may reverse their climatic response between the lower and upper bioclimatic zones of their environmental niche. Our study revealed a high resistance and acclimation capa-bility of Mediterranean forest stands, and such low vulnerability to changing climatic conditions highlights the poten-tial to store carbon in these ecosystems for the coming decades.

Nowadays, wild grapevine populations are quite limited and sporadic mainly due to habitat destruction, land-use change, and the spread of pathogens that have reduced their distribution range. Palaeoecological, archaeobotanical, and genetic studies indicate that modern cultivars of Vitis vinifera are the results of the domestication of the dioecious, and sometimes hermaphrodite, wild species standing in riparian zones and wet environments. Wild grapevine populations have declined as a consequence of various forms of anthropogenic disturbance and were assigned by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species to the Least Concern category. The River Crati Natural Reserve (Riserva Naturale Foce del Crati), located in southern Italy, hosts a population of Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris in a rewilding wet forest close to the Ionian Sea. These protected areas are of high scientific, biogeographic, and conservation interest in terms of Mediterranean biodiversity. Dendroecological and pollen morpho-biometric analyses of the wild grapevine are presented in this study. Palaeoecological perspectives for a landscape management strategy aimed at conserving and restoring the relic grapevine population are discussed.

Ecotourism is increasing in protected areas but assessing its sustainability and contribution to nature conservation remains a challenging task. Guides, located at the interface between various stakeholders (park managers, local communities and tourists), can provide insight into the environmental dimension of ecotourism. However, people may perceive the value of natural ecosystems differently, according to the bio-geographical regions in which they live. In this study, 109 questionnaires (36% response rate) obtained from guides operating in protected areas of two different bio-geographical regions in Italy - the Alps (temperate) and Apennines (Mediterranean) - were analysed. All guides acknowledged the key role of protected areas and the importance of sustainable tourism for nature conservation. Differences emerged over issues such as the perception of the ecological impact of forestry or the reasons tourists choose to visit protected areas. Whereas in the temperate region ecotourism is mainly focused on the enjoyment of outdoor recreation, in the Mediterranean region, the discovery of villages and local and organic food represent relevant attractions. Guides are pivotal in raising tourist awareness of sustainability, explaining biodiversity conservation strategies and reducing ecotourism's ecological footprint. However, findings reveals that up-to-date training in conservation ecology is necessary to achieve environmental sustainability goals.

In the Mediterranean basin, agriculture and other forms of human land use have shaped the environment since ancient times. Intensive and extensive agricultural systems managed with a few cultured plant populations of improved varieties are a widespread reality in many Mediterranean countries. Despite this, historical cultural landscapes still exist in interior and less intensively managed rural areas. There, ancient fruit tree varieties have survived modern cultivation systems, preserving a unique genetic heritage. In this study, we mapped and characterized 106 living fruit trees of ancient varieties in the Basilicata region of southern Italy. Tree ages were determined through tree ring measurements and radiocarbon analyses. We uncovered some of the oldest scientifically dated fruit trees in the world. The oldest fruit species were olive (max age 680 ± 57 years), mulberry (647 ± 66 years), chestnut (636 ± 66 years), and pear (467 ± 89 years). These patriarchs hold a unique genetic resource; their preservation and genetic maintenance through agamic propagation are now promoted by the Lucan Agency for the Development and Innovation in Agriculture (ALSIA). Each tree also represents a hub for biodiversity conservation in agrarian ecosystems: their large architecture and time persistence guarantee ecological niches and micro-habitats suitable for flora and fauna species of conservation significance.

The Black Death (1347–1352 ce ) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis ), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, ‘big data palaeoecology’, which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death’s mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics.

In the context of global decline in old-growth forest, historical ecology is a valuable tool to derive insights into vegetation legacies and dynamics and develop new conservation and restoration strategies. In this cross-disciplinary study, we integrate palynology (Lago del Pesce record), history, dendrochronology, and historical and contemporary land cover maps to assess drivers of vegetation change over the last millennium in a Mediterranean mountain forest (Pollino National Park, southern Italy) and discuss implications in conservation ecology. The study site hosts a remnant beech-fir (Fagus sylvatica-Abies alba) mixed forest, a priority habitat for biodiversity conservation in Europe. In the 10th century, the pollen record showed an open environment that was quickly colonized by silver fir when sociopolitical instabilities reduced anthropogenic pressures in mountain forests. The highest forest cover and biomass was reached between the 14th and the 17th centuries following land abandonment due to recurring plague pandemics. This rewilding process is also reflected in the recruitment history of Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) in the subalpine elevation belt. Our results show that human impacts have been one of the main drivers of silver fir population contraction in the last centuries in the Mediterranean, and that the removal of direct human pressure led to ecosystem renovation. Since 1910, the Rubbio State Forest has locally protected and restored the mixed beech-fir forest. The institutions in 1972 for the Rubbio Natural Reserve and in 1993 for Pollino National Park have guaranteed the survival of the silver fir population, demonstrating the effectiveness of targeted conservation and restoration policies despite a warming climate. Monitoring silver fir populations can measure the effectiveness of conservation measures. In the last decades, the abandonment of rural environments (rewilding) along the mountains of southern Italy has reduced the pressure on ecosystems, thus boosting forest expansion. However, after four decades of natural regeneration and increasing biomass, pollen influx and forest composition are still far from the natural attributes of the medieval forest ecosystem. We conclude that long-term forest planning encouraging limited direct human disturbance will lead toward rewilding and renovation of carbon-rich and highly biodiverse Mediterranean old-growth forests, which will be more resistant and resilient to future climate change.

The Black Death is the most reknown pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe's population. However, despite the advances in ancient DNA research that allowed for the successful identification of the pandemic's causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death is still limited, based primarily on medieval texts available for single areas of Western Europe. In our study we remedy this situation and we focus in particular on the scale of the Black Death mortality. We collected data on landscape change from 261 coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located in 19 European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that half of the population died within a single year in each of the 21 regions we studied. We discovered that while the Black Death had devastating impact in some regions, it had negligible or no impact in others. The inter-regional differences in the Black Death mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic and climatic factors that mediate the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the identification of the pathogen that caused disease outbreaks, should be the focus of future research on historical pandemics.

Photo 1. Demeter, the oldest dated sessile oak (“wiggle matching” radiocarbon age 934 ± 65 year) in the world. A millennium age horizon is an attainable life span in temperate angiosperms stunted (80-cm diameter, 6-m height) by adverse environment at high elevation in Mediterranean mountains. Steep, rocky, infertile soils are responsible for the slow growth, an environmental niche leading to extreme longevity (see the case of Italus the oldest dated tree in Europe). Note the large gnarled and hollowed base of the trunk rooted on a small rocky spur. The retrenched crown restricted to a few limbs and the vegetative vigor along the trunk with epicormic branching are other key traits in old trees. Photo credit: Gianluca Piovesan. Photo 2. Upper panel: the largest (195-cm diameter), tallest (20 m), and “youngest” (570 ± 45 year) radiocarbon-dated sessile oak in the Aspromonte National Park (winter habit). The old large oak is in the strict nature reserve inside an old-growth mixed beech (Fagus sylvatica) and fir (Abies alba) forest managed by Carabinieri Forestali (Alto Aspromonte). Lower panel: large, old hollowing oak trees, snags, and logs provide habitat for saproxylic insects of high-conservation concern, including the flagship species Morimus asper, a beetle photographed on the bark of this oak. Photo credit: Gianluca Piovesan (upper), Michele Baliva (lower). Photo 3. An old (575 ± 45 year) and large (150-cm diameter) oak habitat tree with a twisted stem growing in a steep and rocky mountain slope at the margin of a mixed beech forest. This sessile oak has strip bark-like habit (e.g., partially loose bark, dead top, and branches) with a retrenched crown, epicormic branching, and hollowed trunk. The bark is most covered by mosses and lichens (e.g., Lobaria pulmonaria). Photo credit: Gianluca Piovesan. Photo 4. Left panel: large (96-cm diameter) and old (600 ± 30 year) sessile oak tree growing close to beeches and laricio pines (Pinus nigra laricio). Note the stem taper (very large base) and the sinuous shape (spiral grain) of the main stem. Right panel: As usual, this old oak has a large hollow core that extended along the whole stem up to the canopy. We sampled a piece of wood in the inner part. Note that in old trees, the absence of the pith often causes an underestimation of real age. Another cause of age underestimation is the distance of the sampling height from the root collar. Photo credit: Gianluca Piovesan. Photo 5. Landscape view of the open forest landscape dominated by ancient sessile oaks in the Alto Aspromonte. Photo credit: Gianluca Piovesan. These photographs illustrate the article: “Radiocarbon dating of Aspromonte sessile oaks reveals the oldest dated temperate flowering tree in the world” by Gianluca Piovesan, Michele Baliva, Lucio Calcagnile, Marisa D’Elia, Isabel Dorado-Liñán, Jordan Palli, Antonino Siclari, Gianluca Quarta published in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3179.