CNRS – UMR8212, LSCE – Gif-sur-Yvette, Gif-sur-Yvette, FranceCorrespondence to: M. Magny (michel.magny@univ-fcomte.fr)Presently considered one of the hot-spots of world bio-diversity, the Mediterranean region will probably be largelyimpacted by the ongoing climate change and thus is ofmajor interest for palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimaticresearch.– At the interface between the European temperate andthe African tropical zones, the Mediterranean appearsto be very sensitive to changes in the hydrological cy-cle and water resources. Its pronounced precipitationseasonality represents the main climate constraint forthe Mediterreanean ecosystems and societies. In theperspective of ongoing global change (Solomon et al.,2007), there is an urgent need for a better understand-ing of climatic change and its associated environmentalvariations around the Mediterranean basin.– Already exposed to natural (latitudinal and climatic)factors, the fragile Mediterranean ecosystems has beenaffected by an early and strong human impact. In fact,the Mediterranean may be considered one of the cra-dles of mankind with an early expansion of Neolithicagricultural societies which included the Iberian penin-sula as early as 7500–7000calBP (P ´erez-Obiol et al.,2011); this early expansion was followed by the devel-opment of brilliant civilisations before Christian era inthe Near East (Mesopotomia), in Egypt, Crete, Greeceand Italy. At present, the Mediterranean area is under-going strong human pressure due to a general popula-tion growth greatly influenced in the warm season bythe tourism.In this general context, several of special journal is-sues have been dedicated to the environmental and climaticchanges in the Mediterranean during the Holocene, dealingwith the whole Mediterranean (e.g. Zolitschka et al., 2000;Roberts et al., 2001, 2011; Pinardi and Masetti, 2000), oronly a part of the Mediterranean basin (e.g. Catto, 2005;Oldfield, 1996; Roberts et al., 1999), referring to multi-proxy/terrestrial-marine approaches (e.g. Oldfield, 1996) orto specific proxies and/or archives (e.g. pollen data: Sadori etal., 2007; lake records: Zolitschka et al., 2000), consideringthe entire Holocene or only a part of it (e.g. the mid-Holocenetransition: Roberts et al., 2011; or the last two centuries: Diazand Nanni, 2006).This special issue of Climate of the Past brings to-gether studies developed within the LAMA project. TheLAMA (“Holocene changes in environment and climate,and histories of human societies in Central Mediterraneanas reflected by Lakes and Marines records”) project wasfunded for three years from 2008 to 2011 by the FrenchANR. It was hosted by the Maison des Sciences del’Homme et de l’Environnement Ledoux (CNRS-USR3124,Besanc¸on, France). Inspired by the pionier PALICLASproject (Oldfield, 1996), the LAMA project was based ona multi-proxy, multi-archive approach to reconstruct envi-ronmental and climatic changes during the Holocene in theCentral Mediterranean. The geographical morphology of theItalian peninsula actually offers an exceptional opportunityto choose study sites along a north–south transect from thesouthern Alps in northern Italy to Sicily, and to couple lacus-trine and marine archives (Fig. 1). The main original objec-tives and expected achievements of LAMA were toPublished by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.