Paleofire and vegetation changes across eastern Africa during the Holocene 05.09.2025 CEREGE, Aix, France Abstract In eastern Africa, humans have modified and interacted with fire regimes for hundreds of thousands of years with a cascade of effects on landscapes, nutrient cycles, biodiversity, plant compositions, and other forms of ecological disturbances (Archibald et al., 2011 PNAS). […]
New publication of a site in Mozambique!
A new study site on the inaccessible Mount Lico, Mozambique, explores the history of forest fire disturbances to the drier leeward forests over the past 7000 years. Evidence from charcoal in the soil pit and current tree demographics suggests that fire activity has recently increased during the past few hundred to 1000 years ago. We […]
New paper: Spatial variability of recent macroscopic charcoal deposition
Courtney Mustaphi, C.J., Davis, E.L., Perreault, J.T., Pisaric, M.F.J. 2015. Spatial variability of recent macroscopic charcoal deposition in a small montane lake and implications for reconstruction of watershed-scale fire regimes. Journal of Paleolimnology 54 (1): 71–86. DOI: 10.1007/s10933-015-9838-2 [Video summary]
Charcoal and Wood Working Group meeting @York
CHARCOAL AND WOOD WORKGROUP MEETING Environment Department: University of York Sunday 4th October 2015 Organisers: Dana Challinor (Oxford), Lauren Shotter (Edinburgh), Maria Gehrels and Colin Courtney-Mustaphi (York) Programme: 10am Arrival and coffee 10.30 – 12.30am Presentations/Discussion Colin Courtney-Mustaphi (University of York): The REAL project; an overview of how we build, analyse and use […]
Earth, air, and fire: Claire Belcher at TEDxExeter
Published on 29 Apr 2014 This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Typically our response to fire is Danger! and Devastation! But in this talk, Claire Belcher describes how fire also does positive things for our planet, including regulating the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. […]
Researchers study future of Kenya’s ‘last big mountain forest’ | CIFOR Forests News Blog
Researchers study future of Kenya’s ‘last big mountain forest’ | CIFOR Forests News Blog.
ER 1: (Wild?)fire
Marie Curie ITN Experienced Researcher: Dr. Colin Courtney Mustaphi Host Institution: University of York Institute for Tropical Ecosystems (KITE), Environment Department Duration: November 2013 to November 2015 Summary: Fire is an important disturbance in East African ecosystems , influencing community structure and function, species distributions, nutrient processes, and plays a role in global carbon cycle. Humans have […]
Sieved charcoal analysis of sediments
LAB PROTOCOLS Wet sieved charcoal analysis By: Colin J. Courtney Mustaphi January 22, 2014; November 3, 2020 Sieved charcoal analysis can be performed at various depths down core to examine broad changes in macroscopic charcoal deposition or contiguously subsampled down core at a high resolution to reconstruct fire episodes and to estimate fire return intervals […]