Environmental archives like peat cores, growth rings in trees, ice cores, or lacustrine sediments are used to reconstruct past developments . They help understand predisturbed conditions and provide long-term monitoring data , which is especially valuable where other data is scarce or nonexistent ). An often used proxy indicator for human impacts in paleolimnology studies that utilize these archives is the concentration profile of trace elements (TEs) like As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, S, and, Zn . They are generally harmful in higher concentrations to plants or animals including human beings. TEs occur naturally in soils and water depending on the respective geogenic background.