fire in the rainforest: a 3,200-year history of fire in a West Kalimantan, Indonesia tropical rainforest

Despite its perceived historical rarity, fire is an important disturbance in tropical rainforests. Very large rainforest fires have been observed multiple times in recent decades, often during years of strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation droughts. Fire in rainforest has major short-term consequences for humans and wildlife by converting forest to fire-prone fern, shrub, and grass, but the long-term effects remain to be seen. Borneo’s indigenous groups have been using fire to clear land for centuries, yet the prevalence and spatial patterns of pre-modern fire across forest types in Borneo is not well understood. This research set out to reconstruct fire in a 1500-ha primary rainforest spanning 800 m of elevation in Indonesian Borneo with the goal of elucidating the role humans have played in rainforest fire. We found that humans played an important role in the occurrence of fire in recent centuries. Evidence of fire—charcoal >2 mm—is more abundant in forest types where humans would be..., We collected soil samples (cores from the A horizon surface to 20cm below the surface in 5cm increments) in the field at the coordinates indicated. Charcoal was isolated from the soil samples using 2mm and 0.5mm sieves. We collected, counted, and weighed all charcoal pieces in each size fraction. A subset of charcoal pieces was sent to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) facility for radiocarbon dating (following NOSAMS submission guidelines, including cleaning of charcoal pieces before submission). Radiocarbon dates returned by NOSAMS were calibrated using the IntCal20 calibration curve (pre-modern dates) and the SH Zone 3 bomb radiocarbon calibration curve (post-modern dates). , , # Data from: fire in the rainforest: a 3,200-year history of fire in a West Kalimantan, Indonesia tropical rainforest

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vdncjsz37](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vdncjsz37)

This dataset supports the manuscript (\"Fire in the rainforest: A 3,200 year history of fire in a West Kalimantan, Indonesia tropical rainforest”). In this study, we examined fire history across an elevational gradient spanning seven distinct forest types in Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. We collected soil samples from all forest types and assessed the quantity and age of charcoal in each soil sample to determine the influence of human vs. lightning-ignited fire on paleofire patterns at this site.

The data contained in these files includes the coordinates of sampling sites, macro-charcoal counts and masses for each sample, and raw radiocarbon results for a subset of samples. We isolated macrocharcoal from each soil sample using sieving at two size fractions: 2 m...