In recent decades, the use of sedimentary records from lakes and peat bogs has allowed us to carry out long-term studies to understand the geohistoric environmental evolution and biogeographic distribution of forest species in a general context of global change. Palaeoindicators have furthered our understanding of landscape changes and different types of disturbances as well as served to assess the relationship between forest fires and climatic shifts during the Holocene and end of the Last Glacial Period. _x000D_
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The main objective of this work is to compare the geohistory of forest fires in different palaeoenvironmental sites from the western Catalan Pyrenees in order to distinguish climatic versus human induced causes during the Holocene. _x000D_
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The methodology is based on information obtained from counting sedimentary charcoals (>150 µm) from different sedimentary records, that were subsequently analysed with the CharAnalysis software. _x000D_
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The results indicate the presence of fires throughout the entire sequence and an important climatic influence over the first half of the Holocene, which has subsequently been influenced by human activities from the Neolithic onward. In this sense, forest biomass has been scarce during the last 2000 years in relation to previous periods, and thus only maintenance fires have been detected. _x000D_
Marc Sánchez-Morales (1), Ashley Braunthal (2), Jordi Nadal-Tersa (2), Josep-Manel Rodríguez-González (3), Albert Pèlachs (2)
(1) Departament de Biociències, Facultat de Ciències, Tecnologia i Enginyeries, Edifici Torre dels Frares, Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya, 08500 Barcelona, Spain, (2) Departament de Geografia, edifici B, Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, 08193 Barcelona, Spain, (3) Unitat de Botànica, Facultat de Biociències, Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d’Ecologia, Edifici C, Facultat de Biociències, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
ID Abstract: 502