During the Holocene, the last 11,000 years, climate, vegetation, and likely, humans have been key controls to changing fire regimes in the Americas. A long-accepted paradigm is that of the ‘noble savage’, whereby indigenous peoples lived in harmony within a pristine…
Category: Analyses
Global biomass burning: a synthesis and review of Holocene paleofire records and their controls (Marlon et al. 2012)
We synthesize existing sedimentary charcoal records to reconstruct Holocene fire history at regional, continental and global scales. The reconstructions are compared with the two potential controls of burning at these broad scales – changes in climate and human activities –…
Late Quaternary fire regimes of Australasia (Mooney 2011)
We have compiled 223 sedimentary charcoal records from Australasia in order to examine the temporal and spatial variability of fire regimes during the Late Quaternary. While some of these records cover more than a full glacial cycle, here we focus…
Fire in the earth system (Harrison 2010)
Fire is an important component of the Earth System that is tightly coupled with climate, vegetation, biogeochemical cycles, and human activities. Observations of how fire regimes change on seasonal to millennial timescales are providing an improved understanding of the hierarchy…
Fire regimes during the Last Glacial (Daniau 2010)
Sedimentary charcoal records document changes in fire regime.We have identified 67 sites (30 sites with better than millennial resolution) which have records for some part of the Last Glacial to analyse changes in global fire regimes. Fire was consistently lower…
Wildfire responses to abrupt climate change in North America (Marlon 2009)
It is widely accepted, based on data from the last few decades and on model simulations, that anthropogenic climate change will cause increased fire activity. However, less attention has been paid to the relationship between abrupt climate changes and heightened…
Impact of a drier Early–Mid-Holocene climate upon Amazonian forests (Mayle and Power 2008)
This paper uses a palaeoecological approach to examine the impact of drier climatic conditions of the Early–Mid-Holocene (ca 8000–4000 years ago) upon Amazonia’s forests and their fire regimes. Palaeovegetation (pollen data) and palaeofire (charcoal) records are synthesized from 20 sites within…
Changes in fire regimes since the Last Glacial Maximum: an assessment based on a global synthesis and analysis of charcoal data (Power et al. 2008)
Fire activity has varied globally and continuously since the last glacial maximum (LGM) in response to long-term changes in global climate and shorter-term regional changes in climate, vegetation, and human land use. We have synthesized sedimentary charcoal records of biomass…
