Reconstruction of past human land use from pollen data and anthropogenic land cover changes
(2023) Computational and Methodological Statistics- Abstract
- Accurate maps of past land cover and human land use are necessary for studying the impact of anthropogenic land-cover changes, such as deforestation, on the climate. The maps of past land cover should ideally be separated into naturally occurring vegetation and human-induced changes, thereby enabling the quantification of the effect of human land use on the past climate. A Bayesian hierarchical model is developed that combines fossil pollen-based reconstructions of actual land cover with estimates of past human land use. The model interpolates the fractions of unforested land as well as coniferous and broadleaved forest from the pollen data and uses the human land-use estimates to decompose the unforested land into natural vegetation and... (More)
- Accurate maps of past land cover and human land use are necessary for studying the impact of anthropogenic land-cover changes, such as deforestation, on the climate. The maps of past land cover should ideally be separated into naturally occurring vegetation and human-induced changes, thereby enabling the quantification of the effect of human land use on the past climate. A Bayesian hierarchical model is developed that combines fossil pollen-based reconstructions of actual land cover with estimates of past human land use. The model interpolates the fractions of unforested land as well as coniferous and broadleaved forest from the pollen data and uses the human land-use estimates to decompose the unforested land into natural vegetation and human deforestation. This results in maps of both natural and human-induced vegetation, which can be used by climate modellers to quantify the influence of deforestation on the past climate. The model was applied to five time periods from 1900 CE to 4000 BCE over Europe. The model uses a latent Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) for the interpolation and Markov chain Monte Carlo for the estimation. The sparse precision matrix of the GMRF, together with an adaptive Metropolis-adjusted Langevin step, allows for rapid inference. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/48b5a1c9-5814-45c6-adb1-586133fbc10c
- author
- Pirzamanbein, Behnaz
LU
and Lindström, Johan LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2023
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- conference name
- Computational and Methodological Statistics
- conference location
- Berlin, Germany
- conference dates
- 2023-12-16 - 2023-12-18
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 48b5a1c9-5814-45c6-adb1-586133fbc10c
- alternative location
- https://www.cmstatistics.org/RegistrationsV2/CMStatistics2023/viewSubmission.php?in=370&token=rq1p82r93s932p2953rs9p2po958nn53
- date added to LUP
- 2025-02-16 03:56:20
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 14:01:26
@misc{48b5a1c9-5814-45c6-adb1-586133fbc10c, abstract = {{Accurate maps of past land cover and human land use are necessary for studying the impact of anthropogenic land-cover changes, such as deforestation, on the climate. The maps of past land cover should ideally be separated into naturally occurring vegetation and human-induced changes, thereby enabling the quantification of the effect of human land use on the past climate. A Bayesian hierarchical model is developed that combines fossil pollen-based reconstructions of actual land cover with estimates of past human land use. The model interpolates the fractions of unforested land as well as coniferous and broadleaved forest from the pollen data and uses the human land-use estimates to decompose the unforested land into natural vegetation and human deforestation. This results in maps of both natural and human-induced vegetation, which can be used by climate modellers to quantify the influence of deforestation on the past climate. The model was applied to five time periods from 1900 CE to 4000 BCE over Europe. The model uses a latent Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) for the interpolation and Markov chain Monte Carlo for the estimation. The sparse precision matrix of the GMRF, together with an adaptive Metropolis-adjusted Langevin step, allows for rapid inference.}}, author = {{Pirzamanbein, Behnaz and Lindström, Johan}}, language = {{eng}}, title = {{Reconstruction of past human land use from pollen data and anthropogenic land cover changes}}, url = {{https://www.cmstatistics.org/RegistrationsV2/CMStatistics2023/viewSubmission.php?in=370&token=rq1p82r93s932p2953rs9p2po958nn53}}, year = {{2023}}, }