ABSTRACT
The significance of predictability and uncertainty in environmental change is heightened by the dramatic rise in concern for global climate change, its causes and impacts. Environmental reconstruction is more than a fascinating enquiry into Earth's environmental history. It is also an important tool aiding environmental management and forecasting. This chapter explores how it works. Environmental reconstruction uses the principles of sedimentology, focusing on sediments themselves, and the stratigraphy of broader rock assemblages of all types, to unravel the nature, origins and sequence of past events. Dynamic links between process, genetic facies and time at the largest geological scales underpin sequence stratigraphy, connecting tectonic, sea-level and climate change in the history of entire sedimentary basins. A great fascination of the Quaternary period lies in the coincidence of human evolution with repeated, rapid large-scale global climate and land surface change.
