Vegetation mediated the impacts of postglacial climate change on fire regimes in the south‐central Brooks Range, Alaska

We examined direct and indirect impacts of millennial‐scale climate change on fire regimes in the south‐central Brooks Range, Alaska, USA, using four lake sediment records and existing paleoclimate interpretations. New techniques were introduced to identify charcoal peaks semi‐objectively and to detect statistical differences between fire regimes. Peaks in charcoal accumulation rates provided estimates of fire return intervals (FRIs), which were compared among vegetation zones identified by fossil pollen and stomata. Climatic warming between ca. 15 000–9000 yr BP (calendar years before Common Era [CE] 1950) coincided with shifts in vegetation from herb tundra to shrub tundra to deciduous woodlands, all novel…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• DO
  Division of Arctic Sciences