The Reading Palaeofire Database: an expanded global resource to document changes in fire regimes from sedimentary charcoal records

Sandy P. Harrison , Roberto Villegas-Diaz , Esmeralda Cruz-Silva , Daniel Gallagher , David Kesner , Paul Lincoln , Yicheng Shen , Luke Sweeney , Daniele Colombaroli , Adam Ali (1) , Chéïma Barhoumi , Yves Bergeron , Tatiana Blyakharchuk , Přemysl Bobek , Richard Bradshaw , Jennifer L. Clear , Sambor Czerwiński , Anne-Laure Daniau (2) , John Dodson , Kevin J. Edwards , Mary E. Edwards , Angelica Feurdean , David Foster , Konrad Gajewski , Mariusz Gałka , Michelle Garneau , Thomas Giesecke , Graciela Gil Romera , Martin P. Girardin , Dana Hoefer , Kangyou Huang , Jun Inoue , Eva Jamrichová , Nauris Jasiunas , Wenying Jiang , Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno , Monika Karpińska-Kołaczek , Piotr Kołaczek , Niina Kuosmanen , Mariusz Lamentowicz , Martin Lavoie , Fang Li , Jianyong Li , Olga Lisitsyna , José Antonio López-Sáez , Reyes Luelmo-Lautenschlaeger , Gabriel Magnan , Eniko Katalin Magyari , Alekss Maksims , Katarzyna Marcisz , Elena Marinova , Jenn Marlon , Scott Mensing , Joanna Miroslaw-Grabowska , Wyatt Oswald , Sebastián Pérez-Díaz , Ramón Pérez-Obiol , Sanna Piilo , Anneli Poska , Xiaoguang Qin , Cécile C. Remy , Pierre J. H. Richard , Sakari Salonen , Naoko Sasaki , Hieke Schneider , William Shotyk , Migle Stancikaite , Dace Šteinberga , Normunds Stivrins , Hikaru Takahara , Zhihai Tan , Liva Trasune , Charles E. Umbanhowar , Minna Väliranta , Jüri Vassiljev , Xiayun Xiao , Qinghai Xu , Xin Xu , Edyta Zawisza , Yan Zhao , Zheng Zhou , Jordan Paillard

1 UMR ISEM - Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier
2 EPOC - Environnements et Paléoenvironnements OCéaniques

Sedimentary charcoal records are widely used to reconstruct regional changes in fire regimes through time in the geological past. Existing global compilations are not geographically comprehensive and do not provide consistent metadata for all sites. Furthermore, the age models provided for these records are not harmonised and many are based on older calibrations of the radiocarbon ages. These issues limit the use of existing compilations for research into past fire regimes. Here, we present an expanded database of charcoal records, accompanied by new age models based on recalibration of radiocarbon ages using IntCal20 and Bayesian age-modelling software. We document the structure and contents of the database, the construction of the age models, and the quality control measures applied. We also record the expansion of geographical coverage relative to previous charcoal compilations and the expansion of metadata that can be used to inform analyses. This first version of the Reading Palaeofire Database contains 1676 records (entities) from 1480 sites worldwide. The database (RPDv1b - Harrison et al., 2021) is available at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000345.

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Earth Sciences

Sandy P. Harrison, Roberto Villegas-Diaz, Esmeralda Cruz-Silva, Daniel Gallagher, David Kesner, et al.. The Reading Palaeofire Database: an expanded global resource to document changes in fire regimes from sedimentary charcoal records. Earth System Science Data, 2022, 14, pp.1109-1124. ⟨10.5194/essd-14-1109-2022⟩. ⟨insu-03678657⟩