The socio-ecological legacies of centuries-old charcoal making practices in a mountain forest of the northern Pyrenees

Unveil the unseen: Using LiDAR to capture time‐lag dynamics in the herbaceous layer of European temperate forests

“…As a result, these former 'charcoal-producing coppices', including CWS, that are often managed as HF nowadays, harbour different plant communities and soil properties compared with woodlands that have been continuously managed as HF. For instance, the Bernadouze Forest in the French Pyrenees was initially managed as a beech coppice with fir standards before being progressively transformed, during the 15th-17th century, into a monospecific beech coppice for charcoal production, inducing longlasting effects on today's biodiversity and soil processes (Fouédjeu et al, 2021). Charcoal-producing coppices may contain an additional 4.9-8.9 Mg/ha of soil carbon, and even more (Bonhage et al, 2020).…”

Did the charcoal-based iron industry really drive the forest cover decline in the Northern Pyrenees?

“…Since 2010, this area has comprised the Human-Environment Observatory of Haut-Vicdessos devoted to the interdisciplinary study of mountain mountain socio-ecosystems. The Bernadouze forest in Suc, which is an Instrumented Site in Global Ecology, provides a focus area where several in-depth studies have already been implemented (Py-Saragaglia et al, 2019;Saulnier et al, 2020;Fouédjeu et al, 2021b;2021a). Current vegetation around Bernadouze peat bog is almost exclusively composed of beech (Fagus sylvatica L.).…”

“…While we only used published data concerning mining and iron ore smelting-related archaeological sites (Bonhôte and Cantelaube, 1986;Dubois and Métailié, 2001;Disser and Dubois, 2017;2018;2019;Dubois and Disser, 2020); we performed an original systematic archaeological survey on 46-ha, i.e. in the Bernadouze peat bog buffer zone (Fouédjeu et al, 2021b) according to the methodology described in Py-Saragaglia et al (2017, 2018 (Fig. 1D).…”

“…Charcoals were identified at the level species, genus, family or sub-family. Moreover, we performed a multiproxy approach on charcoal, integrating the study of hyphae infestation of cells and radial cracks, allowing to assess the state of wood before carbonization and finally, wood diameter reconstruction, allowing to characterize the size of the wood used by the charcoal burners (Fouédjeu et al, 2021b). When charcoal has retained bark cells, we reconstruct the logging season based on the state of progress of the last ring's formation.…”

“…Indeed, while fir was expected to be used primarily as a building material 38 (Barbe, 1900;Ruffié, 1997), it was also significantly identified among charcoal. Wood diameters of fir charcoal raise issues about the charring of logging slash (Fouédjeu et al, 2021b). The contemporaneous intensification of anthropogenic canopy removal (Saulnier et al, 2020) suggests the harvesting of a large number of fir standards.…”