López Merino, LourdesColás Ruiz, Nieves R.Adame, María F.Serrano, ÓscarMartínez Cortizas, AntonioMateo, Miguel A.2021-01-222021-01-222017López‐Merino, L., Colás‐Ruiz, N.R., Adame, M.F., Serrano, O., Martínez Cortizas, A. and Mateo, M.A. (2017), A six thousand‐year record of climate and land‐use change from Mediterranean seagrass mats. J Ecol, 105: 1267-1278. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12741http://hdl.handle.net/10347/24288The Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica maintains a biodiverse ecosystem and it is a world-wide important carbon sink. It grows for millennia, accumulating organic-rich soils (mats) beneath the meadows. This marine habitat is protected by the European Union; however, it is declining rapidly due to coastal development. Understanding its response to disturbances could inform habitat restoration, but many environmental impacts predate monitoring programs (<50 years). This research explores the palaeoecological potential of Posidonia mats to reconstruct six thousand years of environmental change that could have affected Posidonia meadows and, in turn, left an imprint on the mats. Palynological, microcharcoal, magnetic susceptibility and glomalin-related soil protein (GRSP) analyses on Posidonia mats enabled us to detect climate- and human-induced environmental processes impacting on the seagrass during the Late Holocene. The pollen and microcharcoal records reconstructed anthropogenic disturbances attributed to agriculture. The record of GRSP shows that agrarian activities affected continental soil quality. Changes in magnetic susceptibility reveal that enhanced soil erosion was caused by both climate (major flooding events in the NW Mediterranean) and humans (cultivation) which impacted on the Posidonia mat. Finally, increased human impact is linked to eutrophication of coastal waters since Roman-Medieval times. Synthesis. This study shows that climate and land-use changes in the western Mediterranean resulted in enhanced loadings of terrigenous material to the coastal zone since the Late Holocene, likely disturbing the Posidonia meadows and their mat carbon accumulation dynamics. Under the current global change scenario in which CO2 emissions are projected to increase, restoring carbon sinks is a priority. Seagrass habitat restoration should consider not only the coastal perturbations, but also the continental ones at a catchment scale to preserve the socio-economic ecosystem services provided by seagrasseseng© 2017 The Authors. Journal of Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological SocietyThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposesAtribución-NoComercial 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Ecosystem servicesGlomalin‐related soil proteinMagnetic susceptibilityMicrocharcoalPalaeoecology and land‐use historyPalynologyPosidonia oceanicaSoil erosionjournal article10.1111/1365-2745.127411365-2745open access