1 Title 2 Charcoal identification in species-rich biomes: a protocol for Central Africa optimised for the 3 Mayumbe forest 4 Author names and affiliations 5 Wannes Hubau1,2, Jan Van den Bulcke1, Peter Kitin2, Florias Mees2, Joris Van Acker1, Hans 6 Beeckman2 7 8 1 Ghent University, Department of Forest and Water Management, Laboratory for Wood 9 Technology, Coupure Links 653, B- 9000 Gent, Belgium 10
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[email protected] 15 Corresponding author 16 Hubau Wannes 17 Ghent University 18 Department of Forest and Water Management 19 Laboratory for Wood Technology 20 Coupure Links 653 21 B-9000 Gent 22 Belgium 23 1 24 Tel: 0032 9 264 61 23 25 Gsm: 0032 485 44 59 84 26 Fax: 0032 9 264 90 92 27 E-mail:
[email protected] 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 2 47 Abstract 48 Direct evidence for Central African vegetation history is mostly derived from palynology and 49 palaeolimnology. Although anthracology has proven worthwhile for palaeovegetation 50 reconstructions in temperate regions and South America, charcoal analysis has hardly been applied 51 for Central Africa. Moreover, a transparent charcoal identification procedure using large databases 52 and well defined characters has never been developed. Therefore, we present a Central African 53 charcoal identification protocol within an umbrella database of species names and metadata, 54 compiled from an on-line database of wood-anatomical descriptions (InsideWood), the database of 55 the world’s largest reference collection of Central African wood specimens (RMCA, Tervuren, 56 Belgium) and inventory and indicator species lists.