Paleofire dynamics in central Spain during the late Holocene: The role of climatic and anthropogenic forcing.

The use offire and, consequently, its severity and incidence on the environment have grown steadily during the last millennia throughout theMediterranean. This issue can be assessed in several mountain ranges of central Iberia where changes in the management policy on anthropicactivities and exploitation of high-mountain environments have promoted a remarkable increase onfire frequency. Our research focuses onfire dynamics throughout the last 3,000 years from three peat bog charcoal records of the Gredos range (central Iberia). Our aim is toreconstruct pastfire regimes according to forest vegetation typology (Castanea sativa,Pinus pinaster, andPinus sylvestris). Charcoal influxshows low values between 3,140 and 1,800 cal. yearBPwhen forests were relatively dense in both high and mid-mountain areas. Fireappeared synchronous between 1,800 and 1,700 cal. yearBPfor Lanzahíta and Serranillos and around 1,400–1,240 cal. yearBPfor the threesites, suggesting anthropogenicfire control between the Late Roman and Visigothic periods that can be related to the cultivation of olive treesin the valleys and a greater human impact in high-mountain areas. By contrast, during the Muslim period (1,240–850 cal. yearBP),firedynamics becomes asynchronous. Later,fires turn again coeval in the Gredos range during the Christian period (850–500 cal. yearBP)and can be also correlated with drought phases during the Late Medieval Warm Episode. In short, our study demonstrates thatfire activityhas been enormously variable during the late Holocene in response to both short-term and long-term regional and global climate, vegetationdynamics, and land use changes.Peer Reviewe