Holocene history of fire, vegetation and land use from the central Pyrenees (France)

Damien Rius (1) , Boris Vannière (1) , Didier Galop (2)

1 LCE - Laboratoire Chrono-environnement (UMR 6249)
2 GEODE - Géographie de l'environnement

Located on a mountain pass in the west-central Pyrenees, the Col d'Ech peat bog provides a Holocene fire and vegetation record based upon nine 14C (AMS) dates. We aim to compare climate-driven versus human-driven fire regimes in terms of frequency, fire episodes distribution, and impact on vegetation. Our results show the mid-Holocene (8500-5500 cal yr BP) to be characterized by high fire frequency linked with drier and warmer conditions.However, fire occurrences appear to have been rather stochastic as underlined by a scattered chronological distribution. Wetter and colder conditions at the mid-to-late Holocene transition (4000-3000 cal yr BP) led to a decrease in fire frequency, probably driven by both climate and a subsequent reduction in human land use. On the contrary, from 3000 cal yr BP, fire frequency seems to be driven by agro-pastoral activities with a very regular distribution of events. During this period fire was used as a prominent agent of landscape management

Mots clés: Macroscopic charcoal; Fire regime; Human impact; Climate; Pyrenees

Domaines: Géographie; Etudes de l'environnement

Damien Rius, Boris Vannière, Didier Galop. Holocene history of fire, vegetation and land use from the central Pyrenees (France). Quaternary Research, 2012, 77, pp.54-64. ⟨10.1016/j.yqres.2011.09.009⟩. ⟨halshs-00966755⟩