Evidence and Implications of Frequent Fires in Ancient Shrub Tundra

• Main Authors: Higuera, P E, Brubaker, L B, Anderson, P M, Brown, T A, Kennedy, A T, Hu, F S
• Other Authors: United States. Department of Energy.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 2008
• Subjects: Charcoal; Plants; Forests; Abundance; Sediments; Pollen; Lakes; 58 Geosciences; Ecosystems; Shrubs; 54 Environmental Sciences; Moisture; Carbon; Tundra; Arctic; Alaska
• Online Access: http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc902031/

Understanding feedbacks between terrestrial and atmospheric systems is vital for predicting the consequences of global change, particularly in the rapidly changing Arctic. Fire is a key process in this context, but the consequences of altered fire regimes in tundra ecosystems are rarely considered, largely because tundra fires occur infrequently on the modern landscape. We present paleoecological data that indicate frequent tundra fires in northcentral Alaska between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago. Charcoal and pollen from lake sediments reveal that ancient birchdominated shrub tundra burned as often as modern boreal forests in the region, every 144 years on average (+/- 90 s.d.; n = 44). Although paleoclimate interpretations and data from modern tundra fires suggest that increased burning was aided by low effective moisture, vegetation cover clearly played a critical role in facilitating the paleo-fires by creating an abundance of fine fuels. These records suggest that greater fire activity will likely accompany temperature-related increases in shrub-dominated tundra predicted for the 21st century and beyond. Increased tundra burning will have broad impacts on physical and biological systems as well as land-atmosphere interactions in the Arctic, including the potential to release stored organic carbon to the atmosphere.