[en] The nature of long-lived radioactive wastes is that they present a radiological hazard over a period of time that is extremely long compared with the timescale over which the engineered protection systems and institutional management of a disposal, or long-term storage, facility can be guaranteed. On such timescales, it is generally assumed that radionuclides may be slowly released from the containment system, migrating via geosphere pathways until they reach the accessible environment. Hence, there is a need to study the evolution of the environment external to the disposal system and the ways in which this might impact on its long-term radiological safety performance, for example in terms of influences on the migration and accumulation of radionuclides. One method that can contribute to understanding of how the biosphere might change in the future is to develop an awareness of how the characteristics of the region of interest have changed up to the present day as a result of the influences of past climate and environmental changes. It may then be possible to justify the use of environmental conditions that have occurred in the past as indicators of characteristics in the future, according to scientific understanding of the main influences on projected future change over the timescales relevant to the assessment. An important part of the basic understanding that underpins long-term radiological safety assessments is therefore information collected from site characterisation surveys; such data, coupled with palaeo-climate and palaeo-ecological records at regional and global scales, can then be used to reconstruct the progression of past environmental change over periods of time comparable with those of interest to the assessment. This report summarises work undertaken by national agencies from four European countries (France, Spain, United Kingdom and Czech Republic) to develop site and region-specific descriptions of environmental change during the Quaternary period, with particular emphasis on the last glacial cycle. The data and information collated in this report for three of these countries (France, Spain and the United Kingdom) will be used within BIOCLIM to guide the development of down-scaling rules for regional climate characteristics and thereby to provide a basis for linking climate model output to system descriptions required for the purposes long-term safety assessment. In each case, the description begins with a summary of the present-day characteristics of the regions/sites of interest, categorized under the following headings: site location and the geology of the region; human communities and land use; topography; climate; litho-stratigraphy; surface water bodies; and biota These site descriptions are then followed by a detailed presentation of the information base that has enabled palaeo-reconstructions of environmental change to be made within each country. The intention is that, by correlating these reconstructions with the global climate record, it will be possible to develop down-scaling procedures that allow the projected effects of future global climate change to be reflected in assumptions about biosphere conditions relevant to long-term radiological safety assessments. Key outputs from the palaeo-environmental analysis for each selected region include: - a narrative description of the sequence of climate change at a regional scale, expressed in terms of simple climate parameters, such as the estimated mean annual temperature, associated with defined time periods. - associated descriptions of environmental change, taking into account the effects on hydrology, soils and vegetation. - identification of key environmental properties associated with a range of 'typical' conditions that have prevailed in different regions of Europe during the last glacial-interglacial cycle. Additional information for the Czech Republic has also been summarised for interest and comparison. Because the information described here has been derived from national programmes in different countries, different approaches h ave been adopted to the collection of palaeo-data and the interpretation of application of such data to long-term safety assessments. One reason for such differences is that fact that national programmes across Europe are at different stages in the implementation of strategic approaches to the identification, investigation and development of suitable candidate sites for deep geological waste repositories. In addition, differences in the palaeo-histories of regions across Europe (e.g. whether or not they have been subjected to glaciation) mean that the types of evidence that is available for constructing narratives of environmental evolution up to the present day are not the same. Nevertheless, the information provides a valuable resource to guide understanding of the type, magnitude and rate of environmental change in different regions of Europe over a period of 100 000 years or more