A number of sediments cores retrieved from different lakes have allowed us to reconstruct climate and human influence on remote mountain lakes and surrounding ecosystems during the last 15,000 years. In the current context of global change, mountain lake sediments contain an invaluable information on postindustrial changes that can be benchmarked against early, predisturbance, intervals. The palaeolimnological reconstructions allow us to extend our contemporary observations back in time, and offers a reference to assess the importance of present day changes.