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Investigating the use of land during the medieval period at the celebrated ceremonial area of Angkor, the authors took a soil column over 2.5m deep from the inner moat of the Bakong temple. The dated pollen sequence showed that the temple moat was dug in the eighth century AD and that the agriculture of the immediate area subsequently flourished. In the tenth century AD agriculture declined and the moat became choked with water-plants. It was at this time, according to historical documents, that a new centre at Phnom Bakeng was founded by Yasovarman I. Keywords: Angkor, Cambodia, Southeast Asia, palynology, Borassus, agriculture, Introduction Angkor was the location of the capital of the Khmer state for most of the period from the eighth to sometime in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD. By [...]

Financial woes are marring researchers' enjoyment of their work., Author(s): Paul Smaglik [sup.1] , Karen Kaplan [sup.1] , Shirana Kelly [sup.1] , Dan Penny [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Paul Smaglik is assistant editor of Nature Careers., Researchers around the [...]

A palynologist describes efforts to determine the historical impact of human beings on the environment in Thailand by studying the pollen counts in earth sediments. Studying samples from 6500 years ago, the author finds a decrease in pollen and an increase in charcoal, suggesting activities of a prehistoric human settlement earlier than previous studies have noted.

The results from radiocarbon dating of sediment transportation and sedimentation in Tonle Sap Lake were synthesized to assess the claims that Tonle Sap Lake basin is under immediate threat of filling with sediment. The current sedimentation rates within the lake basin proper are found to be low for several millennia, but sedimentation at the lake margin and in its floodplain are relatively high and could present a range of issues for riparian communities.

The proxy environmental data that reveal patterns of change over geological time were used to explore the impact of climate change on wetland ecosystems of the Mekong River Basin. The data obtained from the South China Sea transgression into southern and central Cambodia and paleobotanical data from the Tonle Sap Lake provide evidence for the impact of higher-than-present sea level and increased monsoon rainfall on the wetland ecology of the lower Mekong River Basin.