Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature: Data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from ~3.5 Million Years Ago
The mid-Pliocene is a valuable time interval for investigating equilibrium climate at current atmospheric CO2 concentrations because atmospheric CO2 concentrations are thought to have been comparable to the current day and yet the climate and distribution of ecosystems were quite different. One intr...
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NSF Arctic Data Center
2020
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ftdatacite:10.18739/a2qz22j1k 2023-05-15T14:48:44+02:00 Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature: Data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from ~3.5 Million Years Ago Ballantyne, Ashley 2020 text/xml https://dx.doi.org/10.18739/a2qz22j1k https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/doi:10.18739/A2QZ22J1K en eng NSF Arctic Data Center Fire Past climate Pliocene dataset Dataset 2020 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.18739/a2qz22j1k 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z The mid-Pliocene is a valuable time interval for investigating equilibrium climate at current atmospheric CO2 concentrations because atmospheric CO2 concentrations are thought to have been comparable to the current day and yet the climate and distribution of ecosystems were quite different. One intriguing, but not fully understood, feature of the early to mid-Pliocene climate is the amplified Arctic temperature response and its impact on Arctic ecosystems. Only the most recent models appear to correctly estimate the degree of warming in the Pliocene Arctic and validation of the currently proposed feedbacks is limited by scarce terrestrial records of climate and environment. Here we reconstruct the summer temperature and fire regime from a subfossil fen-peat deposit on west–central Ellesmere Island, Canada, that has been chronologically constrained using cosmogenic nuclide burial dating to 3.9+1.5/−0.5 milliampere. The estimate for average mean summer temperature is 15.4±0.8 Celsius degree using specific bacterial membrane lipids, i.e., branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers. This is above the proposed threshold that predicts a substantial increase in wildfire in the modern high latitudes. Macro-charcoal was present in all samples from this Pliocene section with notably higher charcoal concentration in the upper part of the sequence. This change in charcoal was synchronous with a change in vegetation that included an increase in abundance of fire-promoting Pinus and Picea. Paleo-vegetation reconstructions are consistent with warm summer temperatures, relatively low summer precipitation and an incidence of fire comparable to fire-adapted boreal forests of North America and central Siberia. To our knowledge, this site provides the northernmost evidence of fire during the Pliocene. It suggests that ecosystem productivity was greater than in the present day, providing fuel for wildfires, and that the climate was conducive to the ignition of fire during this period. The results reveal that interactions between paleo-vegetation and paleoclimate were mediated by fire in the High Arctic during the Pliocene, even though CO2 concentrations were similar to modern values. Dataset Arctic Ellesmere Island Siberia DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Arctic Canada Ellesmere Island |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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ftdatacite |
language |
English |
topic |
Fire Past climate Pliocene |
spellingShingle |
Fire Past climate Pliocene Ballantyne, Ashley Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature: Data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from ~3.5 Million Years Ago |
topic_facet |
Fire Past climate Pliocene |
description |
The mid-Pliocene is a valuable time interval for investigating equilibrium climate at current atmospheric CO2 concentrations because atmospheric CO2 concentrations are thought to have been comparable to the current day and yet the climate and distribution of ecosystems were quite different. One intriguing, but not fully understood, feature of the early to mid-Pliocene climate is the amplified Arctic temperature response and its impact on Arctic ecosystems. Only the most recent models appear to correctly estimate the degree of warming in the Pliocene Arctic and validation of the currently proposed feedbacks is limited by scarce terrestrial records of climate and environment. Here we reconstruct the summer temperature and fire regime from a subfossil fen-peat deposit on west–central Ellesmere Island, Canada, that has been chronologically constrained using cosmogenic nuclide burial dating to 3.9+1.5/−0.5 milliampere. The estimate for average mean summer temperature is 15.4±0.8 Celsius degree using specific bacterial membrane lipids, i.e., branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers. This is above the proposed threshold that predicts a substantial increase in wildfire in the modern high latitudes. Macro-charcoal was present in all samples from this Pliocene section with notably higher charcoal concentration in the upper part of the sequence. This change in charcoal was synchronous with a change in vegetation that included an increase in abundance of fire-promoting Pinus and Picea. Paleo-vegetation reconstructions are consistent with warm summer temperatures, relatively low summer precipitation and an incidence of fire comparable to fire-adapted boreal forests of North America and central Siberia. To our knowledge, this site provides the northernmost evidence of fire during the Pliocene. It suggests that ecosystem productivity was greater than in the present day, providing fuel for wildfires, and that the climate was conducive to the ignition of fire during this period. The results reveal that interactions between paleo-vegetation and paleoclimate were mediated by fire in the High Arctic during the Pliocene, even though CO2 concentrations were similar to modern values. |
format |
Dataset |
author |
Ballantyne, Ashley |
author_facet |
Ballantyne, Ashley |
author_sort |
Ballantyne, Ashley |
title |
Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature: Data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from ~3.5 Million Years Ago |
title_short |
Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature: Data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from ~3.5 Million Years Ago |
title_full |
Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature: Data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from ~3.5 Million Years Ago |
title_fullStr |
Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature: Data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from ~3.5 Million Years Ago |
title_full_unstemmed |
Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature: Data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from ~3.5 Million Years Ago |
title_sort |
evidence for fire in the pliocene arctic in response to amplified temperature: data include radionuclide dates, paleotemperature estimates, and charcoal counts from a paleo peat formation on ellesmere island in the canadian arctic from ~3.5 million years ago |
publisher |
NSF Arctic Data Center |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.18739/a2qz22j1k https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/doi:10.18739/A2QZ22J1K |
geographic |
Arctic Canada Ellesmere Island |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Canada Ellesmere Island |
genre |
Arctic Ellesmere Island Siberia |
genre_facet |
Arctic Ellesmere Island Siberia |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.18739/a2qz22j1k |
_version_ |
1766319823775596544 |