Abstract
The project mainly focuses on olive trees of Lebanon, where two ancient olive groves areselected. Multiple proxies are used: stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen to assess the past climatic and environmental changes recorded by the tree; mercury contents and isotopes to trace the pollution in the trees; X-Ray CT scan tomography to assess the width and periodic structure of tree rings; radiocarbon dating to help match the ages to the different used proxies. This project tackles environmental issues at different levels, both spatially and temporally, and uses interdisciplinary approaches to relate between the hydrology, ecology and biogeochemistry of monumental olive trees in the eastern Mediterranean region. Through integrating past recordings, this study aims to examine the present conditions of monumental olive trees, to study their persistence and adaptation throughout history’s environmental and climatic variances, and to present a model that may assist us and future researches to anticipate and predict climatic discrepancies.