The Castelnuovo regularity of the Rees algebra and the associated graded ring

It is shown that there is a close relationship between the invariants characterizing the homogeneous vanishing of the local cohomology and the Koszul homology of the Rees algebra and the associated graded ring of an ideal. From this it follows that these graded rings share the same Castelnuovo regularity and the same relation type. The main result of this paper is however a simple characterization of the Castenuovo regularity of these graded rings in terms of any reduction of the ideal. This characterization brings new insights into the theory of -sequences.