Resilience of lake biogeochemistry to boreal-forest wildfires during the late Holocene
Novel fire regimes are expected in many boreal regions, and it is unclear how biogeochemical cycles will respond. We leverage fire and vegetation records from a highly flammable ecoregion in Alaska and present new lake-sediment analyses to examine biogeochemical responses to fire over the past 5300...
| Published in: | Biology Letters |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
The Royal Society
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0390 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0390 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0390 |
| Summary: | Novel fire regimes are expected in many boreal regions, and it is unclear how biogeochemical cycles will respond. We leverage fire and vegetation records from a highly flammable ecoregion in Alaska and present new lake-sediment analyses to examine biogeochemical responses to fire over the past 5300 years. No significant difference exists in δ 13 C, %C, %N, C : N, or magnetic susceptibility between pre-fire, post-fire, and fire samples. However, δ 15 N is related to the timing relative to fire ( χ 2 = 19.73, p < 0.0001), with higher values for fire-decade samples (3.2 ± 0.3‰) than pre-fire (2.4 ± 0.2‰) and post-fire (2.2 ± 0.1‰) samples. Sediment δ 15 N increased gradually from 1.8 ± 0.6 to 3.2 ± 0.2‰ over the late Holocene, probably as a result of terrestrial-ecosystem development. Elevated δ 15 N in fire decades likely reflects enhanced terrestrial nitrification and/or deeper permafrost thaw depths immediately following fire. Similar δ 15 N values before and after fire decades suggest that N cycling in this lowland-boreal watershed was resilient to fire disturbance. However, this resilience may diminish as boreal ecosystems approach climate-driven thresholds of vegetation structure, permafrost thaw and fire. |
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