Abstract
Wildfire impacts ecosystems, climate, carbon cycling, societies, and human health. Quantification of these impacts relies upon climate and fire models, which are constrained by historical observations that are limited to the past 30 years. But in regions where records are sparse, like Equatorial Asia (EQAS), fire activities are assumed to be insignificant before the 1960s. We present a 200-year charcoal record from Lake Lading, Indonesia, which shows substantial fire variability since the 19th century. We identify a significant role of humans in controlling fire activity in Java, which could potentially extend to other parts of EQAS. These results contradict assumptions made in current fire emissions estimates and suggest an oversimplification of the spatiotemporal complexity of fire in EQAS before the 1960s. Our study highlights the need for more high-resolution charcoal records in the tropics to improve fire models and emissions estimates. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 106778 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Quaternary Science Reviews |
| Volume | 253 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 1 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank the Government of the Republic of Indonesia and the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education (RISTEK) for permission in conducting field research, and Satria Bijaksana for assistance. We thank Isabela Lovelace and Ellie Hamilton for preparing and processing samples. We thank Jessica Rodysill for providing the updated Lake Lading age-depth model. A.H.C was supported by the Brown University Graduate School Presidential Fellowship. δD and SST data used in this study can be found on NOAA NCEI paleoclimate database ( https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/14129 ; https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/8699 ). δ 15 N can be found on Mendeley (DOI: 10.17632/sf4b6yk4bc.1). Land Use Harmonization dataset can be found on https://luh.umd.edu/ . Black Carbon emission data can be found on the Earth System Grid Federation repository ( https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/input4mips/ ). NOAA_ERSST_V5 data was provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder (Colorado, USA) from their web site ( https://psl.noaa.gov/ ). TRMM precipitation dataset can be found http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/∼bodo/TRMM/ . Charcoal and charcoal morphotype counts are included as supplementary information and can be found on the NOAA NCEI paleoclimate database ( https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/32133 ).
Funding Information:
We thank the Government of the Republic of Indonesia and the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education (RISTEK) for permission in conducting field research, and Satria Bijaksana for assistance. We thank Isabela Lovelace and Ellie Hamilton for preparing and processing samples. We thank Jessica Rodysill for providing the updated Lake Lading age-depth model. A.H.C was supported by the Brown University Graduate School Presidential Fellowship. ?D and SST data used in this study can be found on NOAA NCEI paleoclimate database (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/14129; https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/8699). ?15N can be found on Mendeley (DOI: 10.17632/sf4b6yk4bc.1). Land Use Harmonization dataset can be found on https://luh.umd.edu/. Black Carbon emission data can be found on the Earth System Grid Federation repository (https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/input4mips/). NOAA_ERSST_V5 data was provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder (Colorado, USA) from their web site (https://psl.noaa.gov/). TRMM precipitation dataset can be found http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/?bodo/TRMM/. Charcoal and charcoal morphotype counts are included as supplementary information and can be found on the NOAA NCEI paleoclimate database (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/32133).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd
Keywords
- Biomass burning
- Charcoal
- Equatorial Asia
- Paleofire
- Present
Continental Scientific Drilling Facility tags
- CELOT
