The Holocene 17,4 (2007) pp. 539–542 © 2007 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0959683607077041 Introduction The timing of the onset of anthropogenic influence on the global climate system is still under discussion and is possibly connected to anthropogenic fires (Carcaillet et al., 2002; Ruddiman, 2003). Palaeobotanical records suggest that anthro- pogenic burning was common in the past and may have been used as a tool for hunting, herding and farming. Anthropogenic fire occurred with high spatial and temporal variation (Pyne, 1994). In temperate central Europe, burning for landscape management and agriculture lasted from the pre- historic Mesolithic until the modern nineteenth century. Most evidence for (pre)historic fire-clearance husbandry comes from alpine regions and the pre-alpine midlands (Clark et al., 1989; Rösch, 1993; Haas, 1996; Erny-Rodmann et al., 1997; Carcaillet, 1998; Tinner et al., 2005), Scandinavia (Iversen, 1941; Kalis and Meurers-Balke, 1998; Hörnberg et al., 2006) and Great Britain (Mason, 2000; Blackford et al., 2006). The fossil charcoal records, however, do not necessarily reflect former burning and land-use systems. Experimental field studies on slash-and-burn could improve our understanding of the processes involved in anthropogenic burning in temperate deciduous forests. They should include budgets for biomass fuel, charcoal and carbon to infer taphonomical implications such as conversion rates from biomass to charcoal, charcoal size distribution and spatial heterogeneity. But, to the best of Conversion of biomass to charcoal and the carbon mass balance from a slash-and-burn experiment in a temperate deciduous forest Eileen Eckmeier, 1 * Manfred Rösch, 2 Otto Ehrmann, 3 Michael W.I. Schmidt, 1 Wolfram Schier 4 and Renate Gerlach 5 ( 1 University of Zurich, Department of Geography, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland; 2 Landesamt für Denkmalpflege im Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, Fischersteig 9, 78343 Gaienhofen-Hemmenhofen, Germany; 3 Münster 12, 97933 Creglingen, Germany; 4 Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Prähistorische Archäologie, Altensteinstrasse 15, 14195 Berlin, Germany; 5 Landschaftsverband Rheinland, Rheinisches Amt für Bodendenkmalpflege, Endenicher Strasse 133, 53115 Bonn, Germany) Received 21 July 2006; revised manuscript accepted 19 December 2006 Abstract: Anthropogenic burning, including slash-and-burn, was deliberately used in (pre)historic Central Europe. Biomass burning has affected the global carbon cycle since, presumably, the early Holocene. The understanding of processes and rates of charcoal formation in temperate deciduous forests is limited, as is the extent of prehistoric human impact on the environment. We took advantage of an experimental burn- ing to simulate Neolithic slash-and-burn, and we quantified the biomass fuel and charcoal produced, deter- mined the resulting distribution of the charcoal size fractions and calculated the carbon mass balance. Two-thirds of the charcoal particles (6.71 t/ha) were larger than 2000 m and the spatial distribution of charcoal was highly variable (15–90% per m 2 ). The conversion rate of the biomass fuel to charcoal mass was 4.8%, or 8.1% for the conversion of biomass carbon to charcoal carbon, and 58.4 t C/ha was lost dur- ing the fire, presumably as a component of aerosols or gases. Key words: Slash-and-burn experiment, temperate deciduous forest, charcoal, carbon mass balance, biomass burning. *Author for correspondence (e-mail: eckmeier@geo.unizh.ch) © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. at Universitaet Zuerich on July 8, 2007 http://hol.sagepub.com Downloaded from