Lacustrine sedimentary charcoal records of the Rwenzori Mountains, Central Africa: Lake Kopello

DOI

Wildfires are an escalating global hazard which threaten ecosystems, air quality, and societies. Although high tropical mountains have generally been considered too cool and moist to burn, recent high-elevation wildfires suggest the emergence of a new threat to Africa's highest mountains. A lack of historical records of fire in these environments obscures our understanding of fire impacts and Afromontane ecosystem resilience. We present two lacustrine sedimentary charcoal records the Rwenzori Mountains, Central Africa: Lake Mahoma (2,990 m. a.s.l.) at mid-elevation and Lake Kopello (4,017 m. a.s.l.) at high elevation. We present our data as a charcoal accumulation rate of the >250 µm charcoal size fraction. We also present pollen taxa percentages of total in Lake Mahoma for Poaceae, Podocarpus, and Celtis africana.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.987871
Related Identifier IsPartOf https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.987875
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.987871
Provenance
Creator Mason, Andrea
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2025
Funding Reference National Science Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/100000001 Crossref Funder ID 2040433 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2040433 Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP); National Science Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/100000001 Crossref Funder ID 2048669 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2048669 Collaborative Research: Fire, ecosystem, and landscape dynamics in Afroalpine environments in a warmer world
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; Data access is restricted (moratorium, sensitive data, license constraints); https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess false
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 475 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (29.890 LON, 0.290 LAT); Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda-Democratic Republic of Congo