Large‐scale mapping of anthropogenic relief features—legacies of past forest use in two historical charcoal production areas in Germany
01 Jul 2020-Geoarchaeology-an International Journal (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd)-Vol. 35, Iss: 4, pp 545-561
About: This article is published in Geoarchaeology-an International Journal.The article was published on 2020-07-01 and is currently open access. It has received 24 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Scale (ratio).
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30 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a multiproxy approach was applied using pedology, micromorphology, geochronology, and palaeoecology to evaluate long-term human impact including soil erosion and land-cover dynamics.
Abstract: Knowledge of the distribution, types and properties of buried soils, i.e. palaeosols, is essential in understanding how lowlands in northern central Europe have changed over past millennia. This is an indispensable requirement for evaluating long-term human impact including soil erosion and land-cover dynamics. In the Serrahn area (62 km2), a young glacial landscape representative for northeastern Germany and part of the Muritz National Park, 26 pedosedimentary sections were documented and analysed. To this end, a multiproxy-approach was applied using pedology, micromorphology, geochronology, and palaeoecology. Statistical and spatial analyses of c. 5200 soil profiles, of which 10% contain palaeosols, show that buried soils cover an area of 5.7 km2, i.e. 9% of the area studied. Most palaeosols are Cambisols, Arenosols and Gleysols. Palaeosols are mainly covered by aeolian and colluvial sands, as well as by lacustrine sands and peat. Radiocarbon and luminescence dating together with palynological and anthracological data reveal that former land surfaces were dominantly buried through erosion triggered by human activity in the late Holocene. In addition, but to a clearly smaller extent, Lateglacial/early Holocene palaeosols and cover sediments occur. Following Medieval clear-cutting and intensive land use, the study area is today again widely forested. The high share of buried land surfaces detected here is expected to be representative for the hilly glacial landscapes even in the wider region, i.e. in northern central Europe, and should be considered in soil mapping, soil carbon budgeting and assessments of past human impact.
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an approach combining a vegetation resurvey and charcoal kiln anthracology was proposed to uncover hidden links between current biological processes and the historical human legacies, with consequent important implications for nature protection and management.
Abstract: QUESTIONS: Long‐term legacies of historical human activities in temperate forests are increasingly recognised as an important driver of vegetation diversity and composition. To uncover centuries‐old legacies, novel approaches are, however, needed. Here, we combine anthracology of historical charcoal kilns and long‐term vegetation resurveys. We asked whether the historical coppicing oriented on charcoal production affected tree‐species composition and how the forest understorey vegetation changed after the coppicing was abandoned. LOCATION: Temperate broadleaved forests in the Slovak Karst National Park, central Europe. METHODS: To explore the historical forest structure and long‐term changes in tree composition, we sampled charcoal remains from 28 historical kilns, identified the burnt tree taxa and estimated the original diameter of the burnt wood. To analyse the vegetation changes over the last four decades, we resurveyed plant composition of 60 quasi‐permanent plots established in 1975. RESULTS: Historical charcoal burning was associated with coppicing, which decreased Fagus sylvatica dominance and favoured Quercus spp. in the tree layer. Several decades after the abandonment of coppicing, we observed the decline of Quercus spp. and spread of shade‐casting tree species with nutrient‐rich litter. This probably triggered the identified demise of light‐demanding species, the spread of nitrophytes and taxonomic homogenisation of the forest understorey. CONCLUSIONS: The shift from historical coppicing to current high‐forest management was likely a main driver of the observed taxonomic homogenisation and decline of light‐demanding plants, as in other European lowland forests. Long‐term data from charcoal kilns showed, however, that closed‐canopy forests dominated by beech were historically more common and observed changes in vegetation thus represent a natural process. Findings also suggest that coppicing taking place over centuries enhanced diversity of forest understorey vegetation. Our novel approach combining a vegetation resurvey and charcoal kiln anthracology thus uncovered otherwise hidden links between current biological processes and the historical human legacies, with consequent important implications for nature protection and management.
14 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, results from archeological, geophysical, pedo-sediment, geochemical, anthracological, and palynological analyses have been closely linked to allow for a diachronic reconstruction of changing land use and varying intensities of human impact with a special focus on the fourteenth to the twentieth century.
Abstract: Since the twelfth century, forest areas in the upper reaches of the low mountain ranges of central Europe provided an important source of wood and charcoal especially for mining and smelting as well as glass production. In this case study from a site in the upper Erzgebirge region (Ore Mountains), results from archeological, geophysical, pedo-sedimentological, geochemical, anthracological, and palynological analyses have been closely linked to allow for a diachronic reconstruction of changing land use and varying intensities of human impact with a special focus on the fourteenth to the twentieth century. While human presence during the thirteenth century can only be assumed from archeological material, the establishment of glass kilns together with quartz mining shafts during the fourteenth century has left behind more prominent traces in the landscape. However, although glass production is generally assumed to have caused intensive deforestation, the impact on this site appears rather weak compared to the sixteenth century onwards, when charcoal production, probably associated with emerging mining activities in the region, became important. Local deforestation and soil erosion has been associated mainly with this later phase of charcoal production and may indicate that the human impact of glass production is sometimes overestimated.
14 citations
Cites background from "Large‐scale mapping of anthropogeni..."
...Our results suggest that it may be problematic to presume a strong connection of charcoal production, soil erosion and the operation of glass kilns based on their spatial occurrence (Schneider et al. 2020) without sufficient chronological resolution to support synchronicity....
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References
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TL;DR: Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing; permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Abstract: Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the R Core Team.
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TL;DR: UNLABELLED ROCR is a package for evaluating and visualizing the performance of scoring classifiers in the statistical language R that features over 25 performance measures that can be freely combined to create two-dimensional performance curves.
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Availability:http://rocr.bioinf.mpi-sb.mpg.de. ROCR can be used under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Running within R, it is platform-independent.
Contact: tobias.sing@mpi-sb.mpg.de
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...McFadden's pseudo R(2) values (McFadden, 1977) indicate a good model fit for both regions, and the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) indicates excellent discrimination between classes for both regions (Mandrekar, 2010)....
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...McFadden's pseudo R2 values (McFadden, 1977) indicate a good model fit for both regions, and the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) indicates excellent discrimination between classes for both regions (Mandrekar, 2010)....
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...– LIDAR‐based DEMs for large areas are often composed of multiple datasets recorded in several individual flight campaigns over several years (Baltsavias, 1999), which can result in heterogeneous elevation datasets, even if the final processed DEM is provided at a continuous spatial resolution....
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Additional excerpts
...McFadden's pseudo R2 values (McFadden, 1977) indicate a good model fit for both regions, and the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) indicates excellent discrimination between classes for both regions (Mandrekar, 2010)....
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