Intro

Fire may have played a critical role on plant community transitions during the Holocene period in the Eurosiberian context; after the Lateglacial forests expansion across Europe coupled with warmer summers would have led to accumulated biomass fostering more frequent fires, particularly in areas where fire occurrence is fuel-limited. Differential post-fire responses in plant communities are expected though across Europe as vegetation is adapted to variable fire regimes, including frequency, extension or intensity. A latitudinal European gradient on the forest response to fire is to be expected as millennial fire trends and forest expansion have had asynchronous dynamics and, as exposed before, pots-fire response is both taxon and location-dependent.

Objectives

Main objective is to explore relationship between vegetation development and fire response across Europe. In order to do so we will combine two environmental databases, European Pollen database and Global Palaeofire Working Group database, containing datasets for vegetation dynamics and fire histories in Europe. We will need to spatially "binn" the data series so they can be correlated, as well as make them synchronous.

Methods

 - Retrieving data: http://www.paleofire.org/index.php
- Spatial Binning
- Multivar: DCA
- Regime Shift Index
- Superposed Epoch Analyses