Holocene fire activity during low-natural flammability periods reveals scale-dependent cultural human-fire relationships in Europe

Dietze, Elisabeth; Theuerkauf, Martin; Bloom, Karolina; Brauer, Achim; Dörfler, Walter; Feeser, Ingo; Feurdean, Angelica; Gedminienė, Laura; Giesecke, Thomas; Jahns, Susanne; Karpińska‐Kołaczek, Monika; Kołaczek, Piotr; Lamentowicz, Mariusz; Latałowa, Małgorzata; Marcisz, Katarzyna; Obremska, Milena; Pędziszewska, Anna; Poska, Anneli; Rehfeld, Kira; Stančikaitė, Miglė; Stivriņš, Normunds; Święta-Musznicka, Joanna; Szal, Marta; Vassiljev, Jüri; Veski, Siim; Wacnik, Agnieszka; Weisbrodt, Dawid; Wiethold, Julian; Vannière, Boris; Słowiński, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.10.005

Cited by 77 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 117 publications

(175 reference statements)

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“…Our results implicate humans in the creation and maintenance of diverse vegetation mosaics, supporting recent studies that invoke human-driven vegetation change since the Neolithic in parts of the Iberian Peninsula (Carracedo et al, 2018;Ejarque et al, 2010;Fyfe et al, this volume) and across Europe Molinari et al, 2013;Vannière et al 2016;Dietze et al, 2018). In Iberia, human influence on the vegetation spread upwards and outwards from Neolithic centres during subsequent archaeological periods.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Apart from the Pyrenees site (BSM), where early-Holocene fires are linked to climatic instability between 9800 and 8100 cal. yr BP (Pérez-Sanz et al, 2013), an anthropogenic driver is probably consistent with the timing and geographic spread of the mid-Holocene fire increase (Vannière et al, 2016;Dietze et al, 2018).…”

Section: Drivers Of Holocene Fire Trends In Mediterranean Iberiamentioning

confidence: 70%

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Humans take control of fire-driven diversity changes in Mediterranean Iberia’s vegetation during the mid–late Holocene

et al. 2019

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Fire regime changes are considered a major threat to future biodiversity in the Mediterranean Basin. Such predictions remain untested, however, given that fire regime changes and their ecological impacts occur over timescales that are too long for direct observation. Here we analyse centennial-3 and millennial-scale shifts in fire regimes and compositional turnover to track the consequences of fire regime shifts on Mediterranean vegetation diversity. We estimated rate-of-change, richness and compositional turnover (beta diversity) in 13 selected high-resolution palaeoecological records from Mediterranean Iberia and compared these to charcoal-inferred fire regime changes. Event sequence analysis showed fire regime shifts to be significantly temporally associated with compositional turnover, particularly during the last three millennia. We find that the timing and direction of fire and diversity change in Mediterranean Iberia are best explained by long-term human-environment interactions dating back perhaps 7500 years. Evidence suggests that Neolithic burning propagated a first wave of increasing vegetation openness and promoted woodland diversity around early farming settlements. Landscape transformation intensified around 5500-5000 cal. yr BP and accelerated during the last two millennia, as fire led to permanent transitions in ecosystem state. These fire episodes increased open vegetation diversity, decreased woodland diversity and significantly altered richness on a regional scale. Our study suggests that anthropogenic fires played a primary role in diversity changes in Mediterranean Iberia. Their millennia-long legacy in today's vegetation should be considered for biodiversity conservation and landscape management.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Drivers Of Holocene Fire Trends In Mediterranean Iberiamentioning

confidence: 70%

Humans take control of fire-driven diversity changes in Mediterranean Iberia’s vegetation during the mid–late Holocene

et al. 2019

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“…It should be noted that in the case of this campsite, we can determine the chronology of Late Paleolithic settlement only roughly-from the second half of Younger Dryas till the beginning of the early Holocene, namely, the timespan when Swiderian populations were present in the Polish Plain (Sobkowiak-Tabaka 2016). Various proxies obtained from terrestrial sites and marine and lake cores from four continents suggest increasing instances of intensive, widespread, coeval natural wildfires across North America and Europe during the Younger Dryas and Holocene, especially in the early stage of the latter period (Daniau et al 2010;Dietze et al 2018;Wolbach et al 2018). The outcomes of the application of NNS in this case study may thus merely represent post-depositional processes.…”

Section: Journal Of Paleolithic Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 82%

Fire and “Noise” in Late Paleolithic Camps: an Investigation of Issues in Locating Hearths

Sobkowiak‐Tabaka

Diachenko

2019

J Paleo Arch

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The acidic sandy environment of the Late Paleolithic sites on the North European Plain usually prevents preservation of not only organic debris such as burnt bones or charcoal but also heat-altered sediments or ash. Therefore, chemical analyses cannot be applied to identify traces of open fires. Instead, the detection of the location of hearths is approached through spatial statistics. This paper tests the utility of the methods which are most widely applied to solve the related research questions. Our analysis is accompanied by case studies on hearths at Late Paleolithic sites in Western Poland related to the Federmesser and Swiderian cultures. The discussion of the quadrant count method and kernel density analysis, ring and sector model, and nearest neighbor statistics show that the last named model is the most appropriate for locating Paleolithic hearths. A number of issues in the application of nearest neighbor statistics may be improved by the additional analysis of the vertical distribution of fire-affected artifacts and development of new approaches for identifying the areas affected by natural or human-made fires in the future.

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“…The fires had an effect on the structure, dynamics and biogeochemical cycles in forests (Goldammer & Furyaev, 1996;Randerson et al, 2006;Smirnova et al, 2017). At present there is an ongoing debate on causes of fires and the role of traditional land use (Bowman et al, 2011;Vanniиre et al, 2016;Kipfmueller et al, 2017;Kuosmanen et al, 2018;Dietze et al, 2018). The arguments are going on for a long time because the occurrence and spread of fires in different territories depended on a variety of both anthropogenic and natural causes, which vary on spatial and temporal scales (Whitlock et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The fire history in pine forests of the plain area in the Pechora-Ilych Nature Biosphere Reserve (Russia) before 1942: possible anthropogenic causes and long-term effects

Алейников¹

2019

Nat. Conserv. Res.

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The assessment of the succession status and the forecast of the development of pine forests depend on their origin and need a detailed study of historical and modern fire regimes. This article summarises the information on the dynamics of fires in the forests of the plain area in the Pechora-Ilych Biosphere Reserve (Russia) before 1942. Current forest fires in the pine forests in the Pechora-Ilych Biosphere Reserve are a legacy of previous traditional land use on this territory. Thanks to the material analysis of the first forest inventory, the condition of the forests of the plain area was assessed for the first time 10 years after the foundation of the Pechora-Ilych Biosphere Reserve. It was shown that about 50% of the forests of the modern plain area (most of the lichen, green moss-lichen and green moss-shrub communities) at that time were already touched by ground and crown fires. The population got accustomed to the smoke along the tributaries of the Pechora and the Ilych rivers, so that they reflected it in the names. Perhaps, for several centuries, fires were initiated by the Mansi, who used this territory as winter pastures until the middle of the 19 th century. Eventually, a small human population actively visited the forests having the purpose of logging, hunting, gathering of wild-growing plants and fishing. The interfluve of the Pechora and Ilych rivers was a mosaic of land, divided between the inhabitants of various villages. Careless handling of fire led to numerous uncontrolled fires that no one put out and as a result, vast territories of forests were burnt. After the formation of the Pechora-Ilych Biosphere Reserve, these pine forests continued to burn, but much less. Since the plain area adjoins the navigable River Pechora, the anthropogenic causes of these fires cannot be completely ruled out. At the same time, we do not exclude the possibility of fires from dry thunderstorms. However, when assessing the modern fire regime, it is important to remember that the high fire danger in these forests is a legacy of previous impacts, which requires further study.

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Holocene fire activity during low-natural flammability periods reveals scale-dependent cultural human-fire relationships in Europe

Cited by 77 publications

References 117 publications

Humans take control of fire-driven diversity changes in Mediterranean Iberia’s vegetation during the mid–late Holocene

Humans take control of fire-driven diversity changes in Mediterranean Iberia’s vegetation during the mid–late Holocene

Fire and “Noise” in Late Paleolithic Camps: an Investigation of Issues in Locating Hearths

The fire history in pine forests of the plain area in the Pechora-Ilych Nature Biosphere Reserve (Russia) before 1942: possible anthropogenic causes and long-term effects

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