Corrigendum to “The origins of Amazonian landscapes: Plant cultivation, domestication and the spread of food production in tropical South America” [Quat. Sci. Rev. 248 (2020) 106582] (Quaternary Science Reviews (2020) 248, (S0277379120305448), (10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106582))

When this paper was first published, Figs. 8 and 9 were incorrect. The correct figures are printed below: [Figure presented] Fig. 8. Compiled data summary for Serra do Maguari ADE - Caranã Lake. [Figure presented] Fig. 9. Compiled data summary for Triunfo ADE - Versalles Lake

Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers

Fire is a powerful ecological and evolutionary force that regulates organismal traits, population sizes, species interactions, community composition, carbon and nutrient cycling and ecosystem function. It also presents a rapidly growing societal challenge, due to both increasingly destructive wildfires and fire exclusion in fire‐dependent ecosystems. As an ecological process, fire integrates complex feedbacks among biological, social and geophysical processes, requiring coordination across several fields and scales of study. Here, we describe the diversity of ways in which fire operates as a fundamental ecological and evolutionary process on Earth. We explore research priorities in six categories of fire ecology: (a) characteristics of fire regimes, (b) changing fire regimes, (c) fire effects on above‐ground ecology, (d) fire effects on below‐ground ecology, (e) fire behaviour and (f) fire ecology modelling. We identify three emergent themes: the need to study fire across temporal scales, to assess the mechanisms underlying a variety of ecological feedbacks involving fire and to improve representation of fire in a range of modelling contexts. Synthesis : As fire regimes and our relationships with fire continue to change, prioritizing these research areas will facilitate understanding of the ecological causes and consequences of future fires and rethinking fire management alternatives

Evidence confirms an anthropic origin of Amazonian Dark Earths

Archaeology of the America

A modern analogue matching approach to characterize fire temperatures and plant species from charcoal

R code and FTIR chemical spectra of reference charcoal data used in the analogue analysis conducted in Maezumi et al., A modern analogue matching approach to characterize fire temperatures and plant species from charcoal. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2021, (578), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2021.110580Contact: S. Yoshi Maezumi ([email protected]

Fire in the clouds:How changing land use shaped an Andean biodiversity hotspot

Past land use, particularly fire, affects modern tropical forests. Charcoal from lake sediments is commonly used to estimate past fire parameters such as burn severity and frequency, but fire intensity also plays a major role in shaping vegetation and vegetation change. Past fire intensity has remained elusive using common paleoecological approaches. We present a new approach to reconstruct past fire (pyrolysis) temperature, a metric of fire intensity, and reveal how human fire use changed and shaped biodiverse Andean montane forests over the last 2100 years. We use spectra obtained from micro-Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) of individual charcoal particles recovered from the sediments of Lagua de los Condores (Peru) to characterize its chemical composition. We then compare the spectra generated from the sedimentary charcoal fragments with a modern reference dataset to infer the pyrolysis temperature at which they were formed. Reconstructed maximum pyrolysis temperature varied with changes in land use and changes in precipitation. Mid-temperature fires (500–600 °C) dominated the record, and co-occurred with maize cultivation. After 1200 CE the Chachapoya people, referred to as cloud warriors by the Incas, started to use the site for ceremonial purposes as the climate got wetter. We demonstrate a concomitant change in the complete fire regime with fires becoming less severe, less frequent and burning at a lower temperature after this transition. This change in land use resulted in the first forest recovery in 2000 years, which was mainly composed of species with low bark thickness, a trait of fire sensitivity. Our reconstruction of pyrolysis temperature demonstrates that the analysis of fire severity, frequency, and our added metric of intensity, is needed to understand the drivers of past vegetation change.</p