Impacts on vegetation
Preserved pollen and spores are extracted from peat or sediment cores, counted under a microscope, and used to discover what plants were growing on the landscape in the past. If charcoal is counted from the same depths that pollen has also been analysed, not only can we detect when fires occurred, but what happened to the vegetation afterwards. Additionally, radiocarbon dating can be used to reveal when the fire occurred, and how long it took for the vegetation to recover.