Fire signal in lakes and peatlands in Romania during the Holocene: A review of methods, groundwork and achievements
Abstract: In this article, we provide a review of research that explores the extensive history of wildfires across Europe, focusing specifically on Romania’s territory. Lakes and peatlands serve as ideal sources for reconstructing charcoal fluxes resulting from vegetation burning. These natural resources are extremely sensitive to local environmental changes, and the deposition of allochthonous material is exclusively atmospheric. The analysis of macro-charcoal is the primary method for reconstructing local and regional wildfires. This article aims to emphasize the significant studies on paleofires, and the processing and identification methods of macroscopic charcoal particles, which include charcoal number, morphology, and CharAnalysis. The review of scientific achievements in Europe and Romania provides valuable insights into these methods. We aim to investigate the potential of modern international paleofire databases, such as the Global Charcoal Database and Reading Palaeofire Database, which provide updated information on local and regional paleofire occurrences during the Holocene period. We will also make use of software tools that generate maps based on network data, such as VOSviewer Bibliometric Analysis, to visualize and study the wildfire in Romania. Furthermore, we will analyze the publications related to this topic that are available in the Web of Science database. We analyzed the results of paleofire studies in Europe and Romania to determine the primary research directions linked to fire reconstruction. Our review revealed that most of the study sites in Romania are in the Carpathians, particularly at higher elevations, followed by mid-elevation areas. However, lowlands have been less investigated up to this date.