The peat bog at Homoródszentpál Kerek-tó (Round Lake), situated in Homoród Hills of the Eastern Carpathians in Romania, provides a continuous record of paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental changes from the Early Holocene. In this study, we present a 7500-year-long high-resolution record of past climatic changes and signs of human impact recorded in a peat bog via integrating sedimentological, paleoecological and geochemical proxies. The basin of Round Lake formed around the Pleistocene–Holocene border when the permafrost thawed. Ponded water accumulated in the catchment basin from the beginning of the Holocene but ca. 7500 cal BP years ago lacustrine sedimentation was exchanged for peat accumulation. The 570-cm-long core was subsampled at 2–4 cm intervals and subjected to grain-size, loss-on-ignition (LOI), pollen, and radiocarbon (¹⁴C) analyses. Our findings were correlated with and interpreted in the light of paleobotanical records deriving from archaeological sites and the newest bioclimatological models of the nearby areas. Sedimentological analysis document erosion and accumulation events which were influenced by more complex processes like climate change. Based on environmental historical and climatic data we aimed to reconstruct the environmental changes of forested areas in the Homoródi Hills.

This paper presents the results of comparative sedimentological and geochemical analysis of the mire at Sânpaul, Round Lake (Kerek-tó). The palaeoecological site is situated in the western foothill area of the Eastern Carpathians in Romania. The primary objective of this study was to analyse the accumulation of major and trace elements in a 7500 year-long peat and lake deposition. The concentrations of 13 elements were determined by using handheld XRF. This paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary study, for which the principal aims were to examine the long-term relationship between land degradation in the Homoród Hills using various palaeoecological techniques, primarily comparative geochemical analyses. The PCA of elemental concentrations suggests that Round Lake is mainly controlled by the input of inorganic mineral matter and the LOI550 of peat. However, some elements are influenced by biological processes of vegetation and groundwater. Geohistorical studies compared with vegetation changes and elemental distribution helped the detection of erosion phases in the level of 12 prehistoric cultures.