The impact of hunter-gatherers on the environment has been a controversial topic since at least the 1960’s. In Northwestern-Europe it is generally assumed that humans only started influencing their environment when farming was introduced in the Neolithic period (ca. 5300 BCE). However, ethnographic research shows that hunter-gatherers actively shape their surroundings in various ways, notably through the use of fire. Surprisingly, little is known of the fire regimes in the Final Palaeolithic (ca. 12.000 – 9500 BCE) and Mesolithic (ca. 9500 – 5300 BCE) periods in the sandy lowlands of Belgium and the southern Netherlands, and the relationships between fire regimes, changing climate, vegetation dynamics and human activities within these periods. This project aims to answer these questions for the first time within the study region by combining micro- and macrocharcoal analyses, on selected peat deposits in abandoned river channels and palaeolakes, with palaeodemographical modelling, high resolution chronological modelling, vegetation cover reconstructions and climate proxies. The resulting local and region fire event reconstructions will make it possible to disentangle natural and human induced fire events. This understanding of how changing fire regimes interact with changes in vegetation will be key to preserving present ecosystems and avoiding catastrophic wildfires in the future because of the current challenges posed by climate change.