Speaker
Description
Mongolia presents a great variety of landscapes and climate, depending on the altitude which differs between the boreal forests of mountainous regions of the Altai in the Northwest and the steppe regions of Central Mongolia. The vegetation and fire dynamics have been impacted by both climate and human activities, which have been present there since the Upper Palaeolithic (46000 - 12000 cal. yr BP) mainly as small groups of hunter-gatherers (Tumen 2006). Since the Early Middle Bronze Age (4450 cal. yr BP) pastoralism has strongly developed (de Barros Damgaard et al. 2018; Jeong et al. 2018; Tumen 2006).
The Orkhon Valley in the Central part of Mongolia is a region of Mongolia which remains little studied with regard to past environmental dynamics. Yet it is a region of interest for study since there was a major place of life and economy, Karakorum, an ancient Mongolian capital from 1230 to 1260 AD. This represents a study of the direct impact of the activity of the Mongol Empire on vegetation and fires during this period.
Here, we aim to present the comparison of fire and vegetation dynamics of two sites over 1200 cal. yr BP. Delinn Burd (DB), located 30 km from the ancient capital of the Mongol Empire, Karakorum, which was greatly influenced by human practices and Shiret Naiman (SNN19), located more than 100 km from this ancient capital, and which has been more preserved from human activities climate and human impact at the Holocene scale.
