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This report reviews the paleolimnological methods that can be used to reconstruct past lake-water total phosphorus (TotP) in Swedish agricultural lakes, including available data sets and data set management techniques. It also summarizes the results of five studies of eleven Swedish lakes and results from similar studies in near-by countries.The results highlight the complexity of the long-term effects of human land use. Firstly, the onset of agriculturally driven TotP increase varies from the medieval period to the 20th century, with some lakes apparently unaffected (with respect to TotP at least) by agriculture in their catchments. Secondly, the impact of some preindustrial agriculture was significant. If we assume a reference condition with no human impact, some lakes were likely at a moderate or worse ecological status already before 1850 CE due to preindustrial agriculture. However, the number of Swedish lakes with TotP-reconstructions is low compared to some near-by countries and these results are anecdotal.We suggest that further studies are carried out, using short sediment cores (i.e. ~50 cm) on a larger number of lakes. While short cores would only cover the last few hundred years, they would provide more data on preindustrial TotP levels and the development through the industrial period which could be the basis of more realistic reference values for phosphorous in an agricultural landscape.

While the environmental impact of the industrial age is massive, including climate change, pollution, microplastics and habitat loss, our influence reaches further back than many recognize. In Sweden, an early and important activity with large potential impact was the mining and smelting of iron, copper and silver ores over the last ~800 years. This occurred in a mineral rich region called Bergslagen, where thousands of smelters and forges and tens of thousands of mines produced the metal riches central to the growth of both local and national economies. In this thesis, I and collaborators present data from >30 lakes in Bergslagen and its surroundings with the aim to identify and track both the metallurgical activities themselves and the environmental impacts associated with this early agricultural-metallurgical society. The results indicate that the metallurgical activities can be traced using multiproxy sediment analyses including charcoal particles from the blast furnace and other metallurgical activities at the sites, metals from the ores (Pb, Zn, Cu, Hg) and indicators of erosion associated with activity at the site or damming and rechanneling of streams. We show a widespread pattern of a spread of mining and smelting throughout Bergslagen from ~1250 CE, including activities at Moshyttan close to Nora, Gammalkroppa close to Filipstad, a hitherto unknown blast furnace close to Norberg, the copper mines in Falun and the mine and smelters at Gladhammar. A notable exception to this medieval pattern is evidence from Garpenberg of copper mining already from the 4thcentury BCE. This widespread, medieval expansion of metallurgy occurred during a time of few written sources, and indicates that this was a period of technological proliferation in Sweden. The environmental effects of these activities were wide-ranging. Pollen-inferred vegetation reconstructions (using REVEALS) indicate a minor decline in forest cover (~10–15%) starting in the 12th and 13th centuries when the first metallurgical activities were established. The loss of forest accelerated from the 16th century, likely driven by the greatly increasing metal production at this time which required substantial amounts of charcoal. No site was totally deforested, however, and inferred forest cover is between 40 and 60% at all sites associated with metallurgy, indicating that the documented efforts to produce a sustainable yield of charcoal were largely successful. The remaining forests were likely substantially changed as historical documents and maps indicate an intensive short-rotation (~60 years) forestry was common in the region, and cadastral maps from the late 17th century indicate extensiveforest areas were ‘young’. The area of cultivated land and open land plants benefitted by grazing (e.g. Poaceae) also increased indicating an expanded agriculture from the 12th century and especially from the 16th century. The expanded land use and forestry coincided with a decreasing spectrally-inferred lake-water total organic carbon (LW-TOC) in all studied lakes, in line with other studies, contributing to the notion that the current increase in LW-TOC observed in contemporary environmental monitoring has an underlying historical component. The decrease in LW-TOC indicated for the lakes was generally ~25% during the early land use and metallurgy but lowest values (~50% of background concentrations) were generally reached in the early–mid 20th century concurrent with increasing industrial acid deposition, which is an important driver of terrestrial carbon export. Many lakes also experienced an increase in pH (0.3–0.5 units) associated with the land use and metallurgy, but the effects are similar to the ‘cultural alkalization’ commonly observed in lakes outside of Bergslagen. One important exception is the lakes surrounding Falun where previous research had shown that the massive mining and smelting of sulfide ores contributed to a decrease in pH of ~0.5 in many near-by lakes prior to modern industrial acid deposition. Taken together, the most important environmental effects of the medieval and early modern mining and metallurgy were driven by the host of supporting activities that produced charcoal and food for the mines, smelters and workers at the sites. The changes in forest composition and water quality have implications for our understanding of reference conditions and the long history of human impacts even in this small corner of Europe.

The aim of this study was to assess the environmental effects of Moshyttan, one of the earliest known blast furnaces in Europe (ca. 11th century). The study was based on the analysis of three lake records in the immediate surroundings of the smelter. Fickeln lies directly downstream and is the main recipient of waterborne pollution. Mosjökälla lies directly upstream and served as the main water reservoir for the water-powered bellows. Kramptjärnen lies 1 km to the NW in a separate catchment and acts as a reference. The data includes 31 elements analyzed by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), organic content inferred from loss on ignition (LOI), biogenic silica (BSi) modeled from Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IRS) for all lakes and diatom counts for Fickeln. Two other studies provided dating of slag from the smelter and pollen- and geochemical data from Fickeln. The results show that the metallurgy and associated activities (e.g. agriculture, forest grazing and charcoal production) led to eutrophication and alkalization in Fickeln. This is indicated by the diatom community that in the background is dominated by benthic genera indicative of oligotrophy and dystrophy (Frustilia, Brachisyra and Eunotia) that during the active smelter phase is replaced by pelagic genera indicative of eutrophy (Aulacoseira and Asterionella). BSi also decreases after smelter establishment, which speculatively could indicate an overall decrease in diatom production. At the same time, a suite of elements commonly associated with iron processing (Fe, Pb and Zn) increase in the sediment.