
Graciela Gil-RomeraIndependent Researcher
Graciela Gil-Romera
PhD Evol. Biology & Bdiversity
Tenured scientist
About
135
Publications
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Introduction
I am interested in all aspects of long-term ecology as a vehicle to understand, predict and mitigate current global change. The main tool I employ for my studies is pollen analyses but I also observe other proxies, as charcoal, in order to understand the combined effect of human and climate on the present state of vegetation.
Additional affiliations
November 2019 - October 2022
October 2016 - October 2019
October 2007 - October 2009
Education
October 2002 - November 2006
October 1997 - June 2002
Publications
Publications (135)
Fire is the most frequent disturbance in the Ericaceous Belt (ca. 3000-4300 m asl), one of the most important plant communities of tropical African mountains. Through resprouting after fire, Erica establishes a positive fire feedback under certain burning regimes. However, present-day human activity in the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia includes fire a...
Ecological memory describes how antecedent conditions drive the dynamics of an ecological system. Palaeoecological records are paramount to understand ecological memory at millennial time‐scales, but the concept is widely neglected in the literature, and a formal approach is lacking. Here, we fill such a gap by introducing a quantitative framework...
Understanding long-term fire ecology is essential for current day interpretation of ecosystem fire responses. However paleoecology of fire is still poorly understood, especially at high-altitude mountain environments, despite the fact that these are fire-sensitive ecosystems and their resilience might be affected by changing fire regimes. We recons...
Since fire has been recognized as an essential disturbance in Mediterranean landscapes, the study of long-term fire ecology has developed rapidly. We have reconstructed a sequence of vegetation dynamics and fire changes across south-eastern Iberia by coupling records of climate, fire, vegetation and human activities. We calculated fire activity ano...
Predicting the environmental impact of climate change in extremely sensitive areas, like western Iberia, requires an understanding of the long-term interactions between climate and vegetation. Here we present a novel high-temporal resolution multiproxy analysis, including plant-wax n-alkane isotope data, pollen analysis, macrocharcoal identificatio...
ABSTRACT: Historical ecology draws on a broad range of information sources and methods to provide insight into ecological and social change, especially over the past ~12,000 years. While its results are often relevant to conservation and restoration, insights from its diverse disciplines, environments, and geographies have frequently remained siloe...
The aim of this study is to provide the drivers of long-term fire dynamics in various regions of Sub-Saharan Africa using a synthesis of updated sedimentary charcoal records, from 25,000 years ago to the present. We used the charcoal data currently available in the Global Paleofire Database, updated with the most recent published charcoal data, to...
Historical ecology draws on a broad range of information sources and methods to provide insight into ecological and social change, especially over the past ~12,000 yr. While its results are often relevant to conservation and restoration, insights from its diverse disciplines, environments, and geographies have frequently remained siloed or underrep...
Supplementary information to support the article of Sayedi et al. 2024, Fire Ecology.
Background The global human footprint has fundamentally altered wildfire regimes, creating serious consequences for human health, biodiversity, and climate. However, it remains difficult to project how long-term interactions among land use, management, and climate change will affect fire behavior, representing a key knowledge gap for sustainable ma...
Historical ecology draws on a broad range of information sources and methods to provide insight into ecological and social change, especially over the past ~12,000 years. While its results are often relevant to conservation and restoration, insights from its diverse disciplines, environments, and geographies have frequently remained siloed or under...
Reliable quantitative vegetation reconstructions for Europe during the Holocene are crucial to improving our understanding of landscape dynamics, making it possible to assess the past effects of environmental variables and land-use change on ecosystems and biodiversity, and mitigating their effects in the future. We present here the most spatially...
The Iberian Peninsula is characterized by a steep west–east moisture gradient at present, reflecting the dominance of maritime influences along the Atlantic coast and more Mediterranean-type climate further east. Holocene pollen records from the Peninsula suggest that this gradient was less steep during the mid-Holocene, possibly reflecting the imp...
Human activity has fundamentally altered wildfire on Earth, creating serious consequences for human health, global biodiversity, and climate change. However, it remains difficult to predict fire interactions with land use, management, and climate change, representing a serious knowledge gap and vulnerability. We used expert assessment to combine op...
COORDINACIÓN
José S. Carrión
EQUIPO EDITORIAL
José S. Carrión, Manuel Munuera, Juan Ochando, Manuel Casas-Gallego
Secretaria Técnica y Maquetación
Maximiliano Gómez Rodríguez, Santiago Fernández, Manuel Munuera
Trabajo artístico y gráfico
Gabriela Amorós, Victoria Sánchez-Giner, Ariadna Amorós, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Fernández-Díaz, Pedro Pablo...
En este trabajo se presenta el reto que muchas veces supone conseguir un buen modelo de edad independiente en una secuencia paleoambiental. Esta aproximación pasa por la necesidad de combinar diferentes metodologías de datación, con la complejidad que esto implica. Se han seleccionado dos ejemplos de dos archivos paleoambientales muy distintos, y c...
COORDINACIÓN
José S. Carrión
EQUIPO EDITORIAL
José S. Carrión, Juan Ochando, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Casas-Gallego, Gabriela Amorós
Secretaria Técnica y Maquetación
Maximiliano Gómez Rodríguez, Santiago Fernández, Manuel Munuera
Trabajo artístico
Gabriela Amorós, Victoria Sánchez-Giner, Ariadna Amorós, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Fernández-Díaz, Pedro...
Understanding the environmental response to the last glacial termination in regions located in transitional climate zones such as the Atlantic Iberian mountains is crucial to estimate potential changes in regions affected by current glacial melting. We present an 8.5‐m‐long, solid last deglaciation and Holocene chronostratigraphic record including...
Eastern Africa has experienced strong climatic changes since the last deglaciation (15 000 years ago). The driving mechanisms and teleconnections of these spatially complex climate variations are yet not fully understood. Although previous studies on lake systems have enhanced our knowledge of Holocene precipitation variation in eastern Africa, rel...
Fossil pollen and geochemical sequences from a series of hyrax dung deposits from rock shelters along the eastern margin of the central Namib Desert shed light on the Holocene environmental history of Namibia. Grassy pollen assemblages suggest relatively humid conditions during the early Holocene between ca. 9.6 and 7.7 ka. A series of stepwise cha...
The Iberian Peninsula is located at the intersection between the subtropical and temperate climate zones and the paleoclimate records from this region are key to elucidate the varying humidity and changing dominance of atmospheric circulation patterns in the Mediterranean-North African region in the past. Here we present a quantitative hydroclimate...
Charcoal accumulated in lake, bog or other anoxic sediments through time has been used to document the geographical patterns in changes in fire regimes. Such reconstructions are useful to explore the impact of climate and vegetation changes on fire during periods when human influence was less prevalent than today. However, charcoal records only pro...
Eastern Africa has experienced strong climatic changes since the last deglaciation (15,000 years ago). The driving mechanisms and teleconnections of these spatially complex climate variations are yet not fully understood. Although previous studies on lake systems have largely enhanced our knowledge of Holocene precipitation variation in eastern Afr...
We have reassessed the palynological record of Equus Cave in the Savanna Biome of the southern Kalahari, one of the longest Late Quaternary pollen records for the semi-arid central interior of South Africa. We combined published pollen results from the cave, derived from hyena coprolites and the rubified deposits in which they occur, into a single...
Sedimentary charcoal records are widely used to reconstruct regional changes in fire regimes through time in the geological past. Existing global compilations are not geographically comprehensive and do not provide consistent metadata for all sites. Furthermore, the age models provided for these records are not harmonised and many are based on olde...
Low-altitude lakes in eastern Africa have long been investigated and have provided valuable information about the Late Quaternary paleohydrological evolution, such as the African Humid Period. However, records often suffer from poor age control, resolution, and/or ambiguous proxy interpretation, and only little focus has been put on high-altitude r...
The Iberian Peninsula is characterised by a steep west-east moisture gradient today, reflecting the dominance of maritime influences along the Atlantic coast and more Mediterranean-type climate further east. Holocene pollen records from the Peninsula suggest that this gradient was less steep during the early to mid-Holocene, possibly reflecting the...
Anthropogenic pressures are causing a global decline in biodiversity. Successful attempts at biodiversity conservation requires an understanding of biodiversity patterns as well as the drivers and processes that determine those patterns. To deepen this knowledge, neoecologists have focused on studying present-day or recent historical data, while pa...
Sedimentary charcoal records are widely used to reconstruct regional changes in fire regimes through time in the geological past. Existing global compilations are not geographically comprehensive and do not provide consistent metadata for all sites. Furthermore, the age models provided for these records are not harmonised and many are based on olde...
In eastern Africa, there are few long, high-quality records of environmental change at high altitudes, inhibiting a broader understanding of regional climate change. We investigated a Holocene lacustrine sediment archive from Lake Garba Guracha, Bale Mountains, Ethiopia, (3,950 m asl), and reconstructed high-altitude lake evaporation history using...
Charcoal accumulated in lake, bog or other anoxic sediments through time has been used to document the geographical patterns in changes in fire regimes. Such reconstructions are useful to explore the impact of climate and vegetation changes on fire during periods when the human influence was less prevalent than today. However, charcoal records only...
Mountain glaciers have generally experienced an accelerated retreat over the last 3 decades as a rapid response to current global warming. However, the response to previous warm periods in the Holocene is not well-described for glaciers of the southern Europe mountain ranges, such as the Pyrenees. The situation during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (...
The El Cañizar de Villarquemado pollen record covers the last part of MIS 6 to the Late Holocene. We use Tolerance-Weighted Averaging Partial Least Squares (TWA-PLS) to reconstruct mean temperature of the coldest month (MTCO) and growing degree days above 0°C (GDD 0 ) and the ratio of annual precipitation to annual potential evapotranspiration (MI)...
We have reassessed the palynological record of Equus Cave in the Savanna Biome of the southern Kalahari, one of the longest Late Quaternary pollen records for the semi-arid central interior of South Africa. We combined published pollen results from the cave, derived from hyena coprolites and the rubified deposits in which they occur, into a single...
Previous paleolimnological studies demonstrated that the sediments of Garba Guracha, situated at 3950 m asl in the afro-alpine zone of the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia, provide a complete Late Glacial and Holocene paleoclimate and environmental archive. We revisited Garba Guracha in order to retrieve new sediment cores and to apply new environmental...
Few continental palaeoenvironmental sedimentary sequences from Southern Europe are long enough to span the last interglacial period (Marine Isotopic Stage-MIS 5), the last glacial cycle (MIS 4 to 2) and the Holocene. El Cañizar de Villarquemado (North-Eastern Iberian Peninsula) is an exceptional sedimentary lacustrine sequence spanning the last ca....
Mountain glaciers have generally experienced an accelerated retreat over the last three decades as a rapid response to current global warming. However, the response to previous warm periods in the Holocene is not well-described for glaciers of the of southern Europe mountain ranges, such as the Pyrenees. The situation during the Medieval Climate An...
We present a multidisciplinary dating approach - including radiocarbon, Uranium/Thorium series (U/Th), paleomagnetism, single-grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), polymineral fine-grain infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) and tephrochronology - used for the development of an age model for the Cañizar de Villarquemado sequence (VIL) fo...
Fire regime changes are considered a major threat to future biodiversity in the Mediterranean Basin. Such predictions remain uncertain, given that fire regime changes and their ecological impacts occur over timescales that are too long for direct observation. Here we analyse centennial- and millennialscale shifts in fire regimes and compositional t...
The El Cañizar de Villarquemado sequence provides a palaeoenvironmental record from the western Mediterranean Basin spanning the interval from the last part of MIS6 to the late Holocene. The pollen and sedimentological records provide qualitative information about changes in temperature seasonality and moisture conditions. We use Weighted Averaging...
The Anthropocene is related to the origin of current landscape configuration, and in terms of vegetation, with the consideration of human action as main forcing of clear, intense and permanent changes through time. In this paper we compile and compare data from palynological sequences, microcharcoal records, archaeological sites and radiocarbon dat...
This volume is the first to explore one of the richest – culturally, linguistically, ethnically – environments in Ethiopia: the land of the Lower Omo Valley. This collection of short pieces, encouraged by local people as a means of communicating with national and international audiences, is also a celebration of the Omo River. Transformation is the...
Tree lines are supposed to react sensitively to the current global change. However, the lack of a long‐term (millennial) perspective on tree line shifts in the Pyrenees prevents understanding the underlying ecosystem dynamics and processes.
We combine multiproxy palaeoecological analyses (fossil pollen, spores, conifer stomata, plant macrofossils,...
RESUMEN En el proyecto CLAM2 se han estudiado las comunidades biológicas actuales y subfósiles de los lagos de Enol y Marboré, así como las secuencias palinológicas y lluvia polínica de ambos sistemas para poder obtener indicadores fiables de cambio global en escalas temporales largas. Los resultados muestran que el lago Enol tiene unos valores de...
Sedimentological, geochemical and magnetic data in a ~ 7-m sequence from Marboré Lake (2612 m asl, central Pyrenees) provide information about environmental variability since the last glacier retreat (14.6 cal ka BP) in high-altitude Pyrenean environments. The sediment sequence is composed of millimeter- to centimeter-thick rhythmites made of finer...
This paper presents the environmental, climate and vegetation changes reconstructed for the last 14.6 kyr cal BP from the Marbor? Lake sedimentary sequence, the highest altitude record (2612 m a.s.l.) in the Pyrenees studied up to date. We investigate the sensitivity of this high altitude site to vegetational and climate dynamics and altitudinal sh...
In view of a scarcity of terrestrial Quaternary pollen records relating to climate change in desert areas, we present new terrestrial sequences from hyrax middens in Namibia. While the few previously available pollen records are mainly Holocene, we present climate time series for Marine Isotope Stages 2 and 3 (MIS 2 and MIS 3). The data are from tw...
High-resolution, multi-proxy lake records from Iberian Mediterranean mountains with robust chronologies have allowed the identification of centennial to decadal scale paleohydrological fluctuations during the last 2000 years within the Iberian Peninsula. The dataset illustrates sharp regional gradients and timing differences when compared to climat...
The European Pollen Database (EPD) is a community effort to archive and make available pollen sequences from across the European continent. Pollen sequences provide records that may be used to infer past vegetation and vegetation change. We present here maps based on 828 sites from the EPD giving an overview of changes in postglacial pollen assembl...
Aim
In this paper, we investigate the role of climate and topography in shaping the distribution of Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ) at different spatial scales. To this end, we compiled the most comprehensive data set on the distribution of this species during the Last Interglacial optimum ( MIS 5e) available to date. This was used to calibr...