Control of the multimillennial wildfire size in boreal North America by spring climatic conditions
2012
Ali, Adam, A. | Blarquez, Olivier | Girardin, Martin, P. | Hély, Christine | Tinquaut, Fabien | El Guellab, Ahmed | Valsecchi, Verushka | Terrier, Aurélie | Bremond, L. | Genries, Aurélie | Gauthier, Sylvie | Bergeron, Yves | Centre de Bio-Archéologie et d'Ecologie (CBAE) ; Université Montpellier 2 - Sciences et Techniques (UM2)-École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) ; Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) | Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT) | Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM) | Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Enseignement des Géosciences de l'Environnement (CEREGE) ; Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Collège de France (CdF (institution))-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
International audience
Afficher plus [+] Moins [-]anglais. Wildfire activity in North American boreal forests increased during the last decades of the 20th century, partly owing to ongoing human-caused climatic changes. How these changes affect regional fire regimes (annual area burned, seasonality, and number, size, and severity of fires) remains uncertain as data available to explore fire–climate–vegetation interactions have limited temporal depth. Here we present a Holocene reconstruction of fire regime, combining lacustrine charcoal analyses with past drought and fire-season length simulations to elucidate the mechanisms linking long-term fire regime and climatic changes. We decomposed fire regime into fire frequency (FF) and biomass burned (BB) and recombined these into a new index to assess fire size (FS) fluctuations. Results indicated that an earlier termination of the fire season, due to decreasing summer radiative insolation and increasing precipitation over the last 7.0 ky, induced a sharp decrease in FF and BB ca. 3.0 kyBP toward the present. In contrast, a progressive increase of FS was recorded, which is most likely related to a gradual increase in temperatures during the spring fire season. Continuing climatic warming could lead to a change in the fire regime toward larger spring wildfires in eastern boreal North America.
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