Knowing the past to anticipate the future: soil charcoal as a proxy to model forest evolution

Tropical forests of Central Africa constitute the second most important block of moist forest of the world. However little is known about their past evolution. Indeed, determining the past specific composition of these forests could allow modeling their evolution over time and providing data about their resilience capacity facing global change. To do this, we performed a pedoanthracological analysis in the semi-deciduous forests of southeastern Cameroon. We excavated test pits in 53 plots of botanical inventory along a gradient of vegetation, quantified wood charcoals by layers of 10 cm, identify the species present in charcoals, dated the charcoals by the radiocarbon method, then built up sequences including present forest composition. Results show that repeated fire events occurred across the study area during the last 2500 years. These disturbances are likely human-induced regarding evidence of anthropogenic activities (e.g. potsherds). Nonetheless the past specific composition does not strongly differ from the current one except for the oldest layers related to the major dry climatic event of 2500 BP. We conclude that moist forests have a good resilience capacity regarding moderate disturbances but were and will be deeply impacted by climate change.