REAL

Resilience in East African Landscapes

Reconstructions of biomass burning

from sediment charcoal records to improve data-model comparisons

New publication: Marlon, J. R., Kelly, R., Daniau, A.-L., Vannière, B., Power, M. J., Bartlein, P., Higuera, P., Blarquez, O., Brewer, S., Brücher, T., Feurdean, A., Gil-Romera, G., Iglesias, V., Maezumi, S. Y., Magi, B., Mustaphi, C. J. C., and Zhihai, T.: Reconstructions of biomass burning from sediment charcoal records to improve data-model comparisons, Biogeosciences Discussions., 12, 18571-18623, doi:10.5194/bgd-12-18571-2015, 2015.

 GPWG_2_RING_CHART-01

Abstract. The location, timing, spatial extent, and frequency of wildfires are changing rapidly in many parts of the world, producing substantial impacts on ecosystems, people, and potentially climate. Paleofire records based on charcoal accumulation in sediments enable modern changes in biomass burning to be considered in their long-term context. Paleofire records also provide insights into the causes and impacts of past wildfires and emissions when analyzed in conjunction with other paleoenvironmental data and with fire models. Here we present new 1000 year and 22 000 year trends and gridded biomass burning reconstructions based on the Global Charcoal Database version 3, which includes 736 charcoal records (57 more than in version 2). The new gridded reconstructions reveal the spatial patterns underlying the temporal trends in the data, allowing insights into likely controls on biomass burning at regional to global scales. In the most recent few decades, biomass burning has sharply increased in both hemispheres, but especially in the north, where charcoal fluxes are now higher than at any other time during the past 22 000 {years}. We also discuss methodological issues relevant to data-model comparisons, and identify areas for future research. Spatially gridded versions of the global dataset from GCDv3 are provided to facilitate comparison with and validation of global fire simulations.

 

 

General objectives

In the past decade, the Global Paleofire Working Group (GPWG) developed and analysed fire history records using the Global Charcoal Database (GCD), which advanced our understanding of the controls and impacts of fire in the Earth system on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. The GPWG2 will meet the growing needs of interdisciplinary fire scientists and practitioners by developing research projects, in collaboration with stakeholders, that employ diverse data sources, a new open-access database, statistical tools, and state-of-the-art models to address questions about fire-regime variations and their feedbacks on species, ecosystems, and climate.

 

GPWG2 activities are organized into three Focus Groups (FG) and four Crosscutting Initiatives (CI), including a geographical challenge and early carrier researcher (ECR) project.

Focus Groups form the basis of the GPWG2 thematic research priorities:

  1. Fire baselines by biome
  2. Fire risk & management
  3. Fire & biodiversity conservation

Crosscutting Initiatives represent the background activities of the GPWG and serve as the strategic instruments of the Focus Groups:

  1. Asian & Africa paleofire challenge: an outreach and research initiative to support capacity building and research in these regions;
  2. Synthesis & database development;
  3. Paleofire data-model integration and links with other databases;
  4. The modern Global Charcoal Database (mGCD), an innovative project to develop a “bottom up” approach to fire proxy calibration, launched during the last GPWG workshop (Harvard Forest, October 2015).

Site information

REAL is a Marie Curie Actions InnovativeTraining Network (ITN), funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme.

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Coordinating partner

Prof. Paul Lane
Department of Archaeology and Ancient History,
Uppsala University, and
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge