Digital images analysis of macroscopic charcoal particles from lake and peat sediments for palaeogeographic reconstruction

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Resumo

The analysis of macroscopic charcoal particles in sediments of different genesis is one of the most common approaches to reconstruct the past fire regimes. The method requires a great deal of time and effort on the part of the researcher. It implies continuous sampling of the sediment core and counting of all charcoal particles with linear dimensions greater than 125 µm in a sample of fixed volume. The purpose of this paper is to present an automatic method that we have developed for the calculation of macroscopic charcoal particles using image analysis. This method is easily reproducible, not technologically demanding, and fast. It allows us to obtain additional palaeoecological information based on the study of geometric characteristics and particle area. A comparison of the results obtained by a standard manual count of the charcoal particles in the test samples and the number of particles determined from the image showed that the method was accurate enough for palaeogeographic reconstructions: Spearman correlation coefficient R = 0.85, R2 = 0.71, MAPE = 31.58% (the mean absolute percentage error), determined particle area comparison revealed R = 0.99, R2 = 0.98, MAPE = 21.45%. The results of macroscopic charcoal analysis of the peat core from Pobochnoye peatland (Buzuluksky Bor National Park, Orenburg region) are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the developed method. One thousand samples collected from 10 m of peat sediments accumulated over 11.4 ka years were analyzed, and 6,000 images were processed. The results of the analysis include determined charcoal accumulation rates, fire episodes and inter-fire intervals, as well as classification of charcoal particles into grass and wood morphotypes. The variation in charcoal particle size was also estimated for each fire episode, providing additional palaeoecological information about Holocene fires.

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Sobre autores

A. Shatunov

Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences

Autor responsável pela correspondência
Email: toxavilli@yandex.ru
Rússia, Moscow

N. Mazei

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Geography

Email: natashamazei@mail.ru
Rússia, Moscow

E. Novenko

Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: lenanov@mail.ru
Rússia, Moscow

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2. Fig. 1. An empty Petri dish divided into 6 segments prepared for image analysis (a), a constructed press (б) and an example of the resulting image of a segment magnified 7.5 times (в).

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3. Fig.2. The intensity distribution of pixels in the image prepared for counting macroscopic charcoal particles in sediment samples for red, green and blue colors. The histogram shows the areas of intersection between blue and green in blue, green and red in yellow, and blue, green and red in purple. The dark arrow marks the minimum between the two histogram maxima, determining whether a pixel belongs to charcoal or background. The peak on the left is predominantly charcoal, the peak on the right is background.

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4. Fig. 3. A diagram of the distribution of pixels in the image of the test samples in relation to the background and the charcoal particles. 1 – indicates the background; 2 – charcoal.

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5. Fig. 4. Binarization of the image of macroscopic charcoal particles: (a) – prepared for binarization, (б) – the result of binarization.

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6. Fig. 5. Comparison of the number of macroscopic charcoal particles in test samples: without plant residues (a) and with plant residues (б), counted by the standard method (1) and by image (2).

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7. Fig. 6. Macroscopic charcoal accumulation rate in the peat core of the Pobochnoye peatland (a) and the inter–fire interval (б). In the upper graph, the interpolated CHAR values are indicated by a grey line, the background CHAR values are indicated by a red line, and red ‘+’ represent fire episodes.

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8. Fig. 7. The proportion of grass (1) and wood (2) charcoal in the peat core of the Pobochnoye peatland. The values are smoothed using the moving average with 10 points.

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9. Fig. 8. Box plots of diameters of macroscopic charcoal particles from the peat core of the Pobochnoye peatland in relation to identified fire episodes. The dark line inside the box shows the median, the box is one standard deviation, the whiskers are 2 standard deviations, and the dots are outliers.

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