| Summary: | Two models are presented in the thesis. The first modelling approach used is to apply a three-dimensional ice sheet model (GLIMMER) to test the sensitivity of selected small glaciers to growth and disappearance. This feeds into an original mass-balance and vegetation cover model, built using meteorological data, that has been used to connect glacier mass balance with vegetation cover in the study regions on an annual and monthly timescale. This model has been used to evaluate spatial and temporal environmental responses to changes in temperature and precipitation of known magnitude, and to test the response to long timeseries of temperature data. At Skeiðsvatn, lacustrine evidence indicates the onset of Late Holocene glaciation around A.D. 650, and that glaciation of the catchment has continued uninterrupted to the present day. Consequently this constrains the warmth of the MWP, while terminal moraines constrain both Little Ice Age and earlier Neoglacial advances. The new modelling approach has provided key insights into the many different ways in which climate and environment interact over a varied topography, with consequently diverse effects upon settlement.
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