1. Regional variability in peatland burning at mid-to high-latitudes during the Holocene
- Author
-
Thomas G. Sim, Graeme T. Swindles, Paul J. Morris, Andy J. Baird, Angela V. Gallego-Sala, Yuwan Wang, Maarten Blaauw, Philip Camill, Michelle Garneau, Mark Hardiman, Julie Loisel, Minna Vӓliranta, Lysanna Anderson, Karina Apolinarska, Femke Augustijns, Liene Aunina, Joannie Beaulne, Přemysl Bobek, Werner Borken, Nils Broothaerts, Qiao-Yu Cui, Marissa A. Davies, Ana Ejarque, Michelle Farrell, Ingo Feeser, Angelica Feurdean, Richard E. Fewster, Sarah A. Finkelstein, Marie-José Gaillard, Mariusz Gałka, Liam Heffernan, Renske Hoevers, Miriam Jones, Teemu Juselius-Rajamäki, Edgar Karofeld, Klaus-Holger Knorr, Atte Korhola, Dmitri Kupriyanov, Malin E. Kylander, Terri Lacourse, Mariusz Lamentowicz, Martin Lavoie, Geoffrey Lemdahl, Dominika Łuców, Gabriel Magnan, Alekss Maksims, Claudia A. Mansilla, Katarzyna Marcisz, Elena Marinova, Paul J.H. Mathijssen, Dmitri Mauquoy, Yuri A. Mazei, Natalia Mazei, Julia McCarroll, Robert D. McCulloch, Alice M. Milner, Yannick Miras, Fraser J.G. Mitchell, Elena Novenko, Nicolas Pelletier, Matthew C. Peros, Sanna R. Piilo, Louis-Martin Pilote, Guillaume Primeau, Damien Rius, Vincent Robin, Mylène Robitaille, Thomas P. Roland, Eleonor Ryberg, A. Britta K. Sannel, Karsten Schittek, Gabriel Servera-Vives, William Shotyk, Michał Słowiński, Normunds Stivrins, Ward Swinnen, Gareth Thompson, Alexei Tiunov, Andrey N. Tsyganov, Eeva-Stiina Tuittila, Gert Verstraeten, Tuomo Wallenius, Julia Webb, Debra Willard, Zicheng Yu, Claudio Zaccone, Hui Zhang, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme, Environmental Change Research Unit (ECRU), and Environmental Sciences
- Subjects
1171 Geosciences ,Archeology ,Climate Research ,Bos- en Landschapsecologie ,Data analysis ,Palaeoenvironments ,Carbon balance ,Klimatforskning ,Palaeofire ,SDG 13 - Climate Action ,Patagonia ,Forest and Landscape Ecology ,1172 Environmental sciences ,Vegetatie ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,SDG 15 - Life on Land ,Ekologi ,Global and Planetary Change ,Vegetation ,Ecology ,Drought ,Geology ,Fire ,Europe ,Fire, Charcoal, Palaeofire, Palaeoenvironments, Data analysis, North America, Europe, Patagonia, Carbon balance, Drought ,Archaeology ,Charcoal ,North America ,Vegetatie, Bos- en Landschapsecologie ,Vegetation, Forest and Landscape Ecology - Abstract
Northern peatlands store globally-important amounts of carbon in the form of partly decomposed plant detritus. Drying associated with climate and land-use change may lead to increased fire frequency and severity in peatlands and the rapid loss of carbon to the atmosphere. However, our understanding of the patterns and drivers of peatland burning on an appropriate decadal to millennial timescale relies heavily on individual site-based reconstructions. For the first time, we synthesise peatland macrocharcoal re-cords from across North America, Europe, and Patagonia to reveal regional variation in peatland burning during the Holocene. We used an existing database of proximal sedimentary charcoal to represent regional burning trends in the wider landscape for each region. Long-term trends in peatland burning appear to be largely climate driven, with human activities likely having an increasing influence in the late Holocene. Warmer conditions during the Holocene Thermal Maximum (similar to 9e6 cal. ka BP) were associated with greater peatland burning in North America's Atlantic coast, southern Scandinavia and the Baltics, and Patagonia. Since the Little Ice Age, peatland burning has declined across North America and in some areas of Europe. This decline is mirrored by a decrease in wider landscape burning in some, but not all sub-regions, linked to fire-suppression policies, and landscape fragmentation caused by agricultural expansion. Peatlands demonstrate lower susceptibility to burning than the wider landscape in several instances, probably because of autogenic processes that maintain high levels of near-surface wetness even during drought. Nonetheless, widespread drying and degradation of peatlands, particularly in Europe, has likely increased their vulnerability to burning in recent centuries. Consequently, peatland restoration efforts are important to mitigate the risk of peatland fire under a changing climate. Finally, we make recommendations for future research to improve our understanding of the controls on peatland fires.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF