This project aims to gain detailed understanding of the Mediterranean fire regime and ecology over the Holocene, providing a sound basis for risk assessment, and focusing on questions such as: How have climate and land use shaped fire regimes and ecosystems throughout the Holocene? How resilient are different vegetation types, certain species and ecosystem functioning to changes in climate and fire?
This project addresses these questions by linking existing and new data with models. It combines methods from paleoecology, paleoclimatology, geomorphology, archeology and vegetation-fire modeling. New datasets (sedimentary charcoal counting) from lake cores (Provence, Alpes Maritimes, Corse) and regional extrapolations will be first produced by the applicant who will then combine them with fine-scale fire models (BehavePlus and FlamMap3), a regional-scale dynamic vegetation-fire models (with the LPJ-GUESS-SPITFIRE model) and a fire risk model ‘Fire Weather Index). By cross-scale data-model comparisons, we expect to gain a realistic representation of fire and ecosystem dynamics over the Holocene and improve our understanding of the underlying mechanisms. We will also improve and test vegetation-fire models widely used in climate impact research and re-assess earlier projections of rather dramatic ecosystem shifts in the Mediterranean region. Our results will inform land management and nature conservation actions and policies.
