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Forest succession and climate variability interacted to control fire activity over the last four centuries in an Alaskan boreal landscape

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Abstract

Context

The boreal forest is globally important for its influence on Earth’s energy balance, and its sensitivity to climate change. Ecosystem functioning in boreal forests is shaped by fire activity, so anticipating the impacts of climate change requires understanding the precedence for, and consequences of, climatically induced changes in fire regimes. Long-term records of climate, fire, and vegetation are critical for gaining this understanding.

Objectives

We investigated the relative importance of climate and landscape flammability as drivers of fire activity in boreal forests by developing high-resolution records of fire history, and characterizing their centennial-scale relationships to temperature and vegetation dynamics.

Methods

We reconstructed the timing of fire activity in interior Alaska, USA, using seven lake-sediment charcoal records spanning CE 1550–2015. We developed individual and composite records of fire activity, and used correlations and qualitative comparisons to assess relationships with existing records of vegetation and climate.

Results

Our records document a dynamic relationship between climate and fire. Fire activity and temperature showed stronger coupling after ca. 1900 than in the preceding 350 yr. Biomass burning and temperatures increased concurrently during the second half of the twentieth century, to their highest point in the record. Fire activity followed pulses in black spruce establishment.

Conclusions

Fire activity was facilitated by warm temperatures and landscape-scale dominance of highly flammable mature black spruce, with a notable increase in temperature and fire activity during the twenty-first century. The results suggest that widespread burning at landscape scales is controlled by a combination of climate and vegetation dynamics that together drive flammability.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge field assistance from Alex Shapiro and Meghan Foard, and laboratory assistance from Meghan Foard, Cassidy Robertson, Camie Westfall, Kerry Sullivan, and Andrew Neumann. We thank Paul Duffy for sharing information on the tree-ring dataset, Tom Brown for assistance with radiocarbon analysis, and Ryan Kelly for help with data analysis and comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. The manuscript was improved by comments from Ashley Ballantyne, Solomon Dobrowski, Carl Seielstad, and two anonymous reviewers. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation through grant EF-1241846/1606351 to P. E. Higuera, and a University of Minnesota LacCore visiting Graduate Student Award to T. J. Hoecker. All data and code used in this manuscript are publicly available via the Dryad Digital Repository https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hg19c6n, or upon request to the authors.

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  1. Tyler J. Hoecker

    Present address: Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

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  1. Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

    Tyler J. Hoecker & Philip E. Higuera

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Correspondence to Tyler J. Hoecker.

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Hoecker, T.J., Higuera, P.E. Forest succession and climate variability interacted to control fire activity over the last four centuries in an Alaskan boreal landscape. Landscape Ecol 34, 227–241 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-00766-8

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