Fig. 5
Comparison of forest canopy openness (pollen-based vegetation response index [VRI]; dashed green line), fire (charcoal accumulation rate [CHAR]; orange line), and climate (Palmer Drought Severity Index [PDSI]; grey solid line) trends at Markwood Meadow, California, USA. Pollen and charcoal came from a sediment core extracted from the meadow in 2019. Thick lines represent 50-year smoothed splines. Dots on thin green line show un-splined VRI data points. Data are scaled for presentation, normalizing each dataset’s mean value and standard deviation to allow for comparison. LIA: Little Ice Age (1200 – 1850). MCA: Medieval Climate Anomaly (900 – 1200). Modern (1850 – 2019)