Scientific investigations on lakes started during the 19th century in Europe and the US. Since this time paleolimnological and limnogeological investigations increased distinctly and during the last few years there has been a rapid advance in the understanding of processes operating in lacustrine systems. However, most studies focused on easily accessible locations. Despite major improvements in scientific knowledge of lakes up to now, there still remain gaps especially for the areas investigated in this thesis, i.e., the different rainfall zones of South Africa, the Tibetan Plateau, the steppe parts of Argentinean Patagonia, the Ecuadorian Andes, and the Island of Sulawesi (Indonesia). The papers in this thesis try to close some of these gaps and try to contribute to a better understanding of processes that occurred in the past and their (paleo-)environmental consequences in regions that have rarely been investigated so far. The aim of this thesis is to provide new paleolimnological and limnogeological information and develop process based conceptual models from areas of the world where this kind of information is very scarce to inexistent. A special emphasis will be on the construction of reliable chronologies using multi-dating approaches. In this context one focus will be on the evaluation of chronologies using paleomagnetic secular variations wherever this was possible depending on sediment properties. In order to reach this aim the papers forming this thesis are structured as follows: 1. New conceptual approaches 2. Paleoenvironmental reconstructions using simple magnetostratigraphically not confirmed chronologies since no paleomagnetic secular variation data could be obtained from the sediment and other paleolimnological and limnogeological investigations 3. Paleomagnetic investigations and/or magnetostratigraphic evaluations of chronologies 4. Paleoenvironmental information from magnetostratigraphically corroborated chronologies 5. Other dating approaches