Because forest fires in central Europe are rare compared to North America, knowledge about the postfire behavior of native European species is scanty. The expected climate change for the next century could influence fire regimes in central Europe thereby leading to more frequent forest fires. Thus, knowledge about post-fire behaviour and fire-sensitivities of central-European plant species may become more important for understanding and managing forest ecosystems. In Switzerland most fires occur in the region south of the Alps during the early spring season (March to April). During this period the deciduous forest belt is threatened by fast spreading surface fires that, in certain cases, represent a very important disturbance factor (Conedera et al. 1996). It is well known that the vegetation shows different reaction patterns to fire depending on the life strategy of the species and the fire regime (Bond and van Wilgen 1996, Hofmann et al. 1998), but because fire affects species composition at timescales of years to centuries, direct observation of the full range of post-fire vegetational change is not possible. To overcome this difficulty, we combine paleoecological, dendroecological and phytosociological methods in order to (1) determine vegetation response patterns during different historical periods and fire regimes and (2) provide information on related long-term ecosystem dynamics.