Data from: 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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chipman, Melissa L., Hu, Feng Sheng
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: Dryad 2019
Subjects:
CN
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.440rk01
https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.440rk01
Description
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 δ13C, %C, %N, C:N, or magnetic susceptibility between pre-fire, post-fire, and fire samples. However, δ15N is related to the timing relative to fire (Χ2=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 δ15N 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 δ15N in fire decades likely reflects enhanced terrestrial nitrification and/or deeper permafrost-thaw depths immediately following fire. Similar δ15N values before and after fire decades suggest that N cycling in this lowland-boreal ... : Chipman_Hu_2019_Biology_Letters_raw_dataThis file contains raw geochemical data from Screaming Lynx Lake, Yukon Flats, Alaska.Chipman_Hu_2019_raw_data.csv ...