Holocene vegetation dynamics in large islands of the Mediterranean

long-term effects of climate changes and human impact on isolated vulnerable ecosystems. This is of particular interest for the large islands of the Mediterranean, globally known as biodiversity hotspots under the ever-increasing threat of climate warming. Our study provides a comprehensive review of pollen records from the largest islands of the Mediterranean Basin, namely Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Crete, and Balearic Islands. The aim is to define the role of natural environmental changes and human pressure in the evolution of mediterranean vegetation, and identify long-term palaeoecological trends in island ecosystems. We performed Bayesian age-depth modelling for each pollen record, to provide an accurate and consistent age estimation method, enabling the direct comparison of vegetation dynamics across multiple sites. Our analysis reveals a complex vegetation history, often influenced by the legacy of floristic associations dating back to the Pleistocene. Millennial-scale climate changes mostly related to insolation produced a progressive transformation in vegetational patterns of these islands, with a direct influence on fire regime. Rapid Climate Changes (RCCs) exerted dramatic effects on forest ecosystems, especially when associated to drought, leading to deforestation. However, it is interesting to note that the past vegetation of some sites remained unchanged. This can be explained by both a complex geographical expression of major RCCs and the resistance and resilience of some vegetation types to climate perturbations. Impact of human activity on island ecosystems dates to the Neolithic, but in most cases human-induced woodlands depletion manly occurred since the Roman period