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Reconstruction of past human land use from pollen data and anthropogenic land cover changes

Pirzamanbein, Behnaz LU orcid and Lindström, Johan LU orcid (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)
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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}},
}