The course is directed towards analyses of environmental changes and understanding their causes. By using different types of data, the aim is that the students should be able to determine when an environmental change has occurred, what was the cause of the change, and what the consequences of this change might be. We will discuss how the determination of background or reference conditions as well as natural variability relates to our understanding of environmental changes. During the course you will learn how to use different types of environmental data, e.g., monitoring data and environmental archives such as lake sediments and peat. We will also discuss different techniques for collecting and analyzing environmental samples in order to understand how sample heterogeneity and analytical uncertainty may affect how the data can be interpreted.
