European Charcoal Database

Professor Richard Bradshaw, Katharine Welsh, Tim Shaw

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have compiled a European Charcoal Database as part of FIREMAN work package 1. Large databases such as the European Pollen Database and Global Charcoal Database have been a successful and useful tool for the wider community.

 

There are currently 163 sites in the European Charcoal Database, with approximately 75 additional sites to be integrated from the British Isles Charcoal Database (see below for more details). There is a good spread of charcoal data across Europe which will be essential for further analyses of these data and past fire regimes.

If you wish to submit charcoal data to this database, please contact Katharine Welsh:kew6@liv.ac.uk

 

 

British Isles Charcoal Database

Claire Jones, University of Liverpool

The British Isles Charcoal Database (BICD) was created in an attempt to answer some fundamental questions about fire in the British Isles during the Holocene.  In particular, to explore the role of the major drivers of fire; climate, human influence and fuel, in the British Isles.  Charcoal fragments have been recorded from a variety of Holocene sediments and deposits in the British Isles, with most of the data from northern and western regions. 

There has been no previous attempt to collate these records and therefore little analysis performed.  It is hoped that the collation of these data may provide a means of identifying spatio-temporal relationships, providing a valuable tool in the effort to distinguish between the major drivers of fire events.

BICD will be integrated to the larger European Charcoal Database by the end of 2009.