Multi-century reconstruction suggests complex interactions of climate and human controls of forest fire activity in a Karelian boreal landscape, North-West Russia

Ryzhkova, Nina; Pinto, Guilherme Stecher Justiniano; Kryshen, Alexander; Bergeron, Yves; Ols, Clémentine; Drobyshev, Igor

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117770

Cited by 21 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…We defined the fire cycle (FC) as the period required to burn the area equal to the total area studied (Johnson and Van Wagner 1985). To reconstruct the historical FCs, we followed the methodology used by Ryzhkova et al (2020). The method assumes that a fire dated on a site burned a certain area centered on that site.…”

Section: Reconstruction Of Historical Fire Cyclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Seasonal signals were, therefore, difficult to obtain, making the dendroclimatic analyses less powerful. Similarly, the selection of bi-monthly SPEI as a historical drought proxy for the entire fire season assumed a limited within-season variability in drought/fire hazard, which may not necessarily be the case (see discussion in Ryzhkova et al 2020). Finally, the moderate size of the sampled area (~14000 ha) might prevent our fire reconstruction from capturing the regional climate signal.…”

Section: Climate Influence On Historical Firesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Today, between 3000 and 4000 fires are recorded in the Swedish forests annually, with the total area burned being around 0.008% of the forested area per year, corresponding to the fire cycle of around 10 4 years (Drobyshev et al 2012;MSB 2017). In comparison, the fire cycle in the Northern European boreal forests prior to the 1700s varied between 50 and 300 years (Niklasson and Granstrom 2000;Drobyshev et al 2012;Ryzhkova et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A 500-year history of forest fires in Sala area, central Sweden, shows the earliest known onset of fire suppression in Scandinavia

et al. 2020

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The Sala fire in the Västmanland County of central Sweden that burned about 14,000 ha in 2014 has been the largest fire recorded in the modern history of Sweden. To understand the long-term fire history of this area, we dendrochronologically dated fire scars on Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) trees (live and deadwood) to reconstruct the fire cycle and fire occurrence in the area affected by the 2014 fire. We identified 64 fire years, using a total of 378 pine samples. The earliest reconstructed fire dated back to 1113 AD. The spatial reconstruction extended over the period of 1480–2018 AD. Lower levels of fire activity (fire cycle, FC = 43 years, with the central 90% of the distribution limited by 35 to 57 years) dominated in the earlier period (1480–1690 AD) that was followed by a strong decrease in fire activity since 1700 (FC = 403 years, with 90% of the distribution being within 149 to 7308 years), with a fire-free period between 1756 and 2014. Sala area, therefore, features the earliest known onset of fire suppression in Scandinavia. The high demand for timber during the peak in mining activities in the study area around the 1700–1800s, accompanied by passive fire suppression policies, were possibly the main drivers of the decline in fire activity. Superposed epoch analysis (SEA) did not show significant departures in the drought proxy during the ten years with the largest area burned between 1480 and1690. It is unclear whether the result is due to the relatively small area sampled or an indication that human controls of fires dominated during that period. However, significant departures during the following period with low fire activity (1700–1756), which just preceded the last fire-free period, suggested that the climate became an increasingly important driver of fire during the onset of the suppression period. We speculate that the lack of major firebreaks, the homogenization of forests, and the lack of burned areas with low fuel loads might contribute to the occurrence of the exceptionally large 2014 fire in Sala.

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Section: Reconstruction Of Historical Fire Cyclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Climate Influence On Historical Firesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A 500-year history of forest fires in Sala area, central Sweden, shows the earliest known onset of fire suppression in Scandinavia

et al. 2020

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“…The mean fire cycle in the studied administrative units varied between 1581 years (St. Petersburg region) and 37119 years (Finland) (Table 1). These estimates are one to two orders of magnitude longer than the fire cycles reconstructed across the Fennoscandia region prior to 1800 AD, when the fire cycle typically ranged between 50 and 300 years (Niklasson and Granström, 2000;Wallenius et al, 2010;Rolstad et al, 2017;Ryzhkova et al, 2020). Comparison of dendrochronologically-derived fire cycles with those based on the observational data is to be done with caution.…”

Section: Pattern Of Forest Fire Cycles Across Ebzmentioning

confidence: 89%

Trends and patterns in annually burned forest areas and fire weather across the European boreal zone in the 20th and early 21st centuries

Drobyshev¹,

Kitenberga²,

Ryzhkova³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Fire remains the main natural disturbance factor in the European boreal zone (EBZ), which exhibits strong gradients in climate conditions, modern and historical patterns of forest use, and the modern human infrastructure density. Understanding climatic forcing on fire activity is important for projecting effects of climate change on multiple ecosystem services in this region. Here we analyzed available records of annually burned areas (ABA) in 16 administrative regions of EBZ (countries or sub-country units) and fire weather variability to test for their spatio-temporal patterns over 1901-2017. To define sub-regions of EBZ with similar fire activity we compiled 30-60 year long ABA chronologies and clustered them in Euclidian space to identify regions of EBZ with temporally synchronous fire activity. We then reconstructed 100-year long ABA chronologies for each cluster, capitalizing on its member with the highest correlation between observational fire record and climatological fire weather proxy (MDC, monthly drought code). The 100-year chronologies helped identified large fire years (LFY), i.e. years with the ABA being above 10% of its long-term distribution. The climatic forcing of these events was tested in superposed epoch analysis operated with gridded 500 hPa pressure fields. Finally, we tested trends in (a) synchrony of LFY's across clusters, (b) MDC values over the EBZ, and (c) spatial variability in July MDC over the EBZ geographic domain during 1901-2017.EBZ exhibits large variability in forest fire activity with the fire cycles varying from ~104 (Scandinavia) to 3*102 years (Russian Republic of Komi). Clustering of administrative units in respect to their ABA suggested the presence of sub-regions with synchronous dynamics of ABA, located&#160; along W-E and S-N gradients. LFYs in each of the cluster was associated with the development of the high pressure cell over the regions in question in July, indicating climatic forcing of LFYs. Contingency analysis indicated no long-term trend in the synchrony of LFYs observed simultaneously in several administrative units. We observed a trend towards higher values of MDC for the months of April and May in the western section of EBZ (April) and southern-eastern sections of the Baltic sea region and North sections of EBZ in Russia (May). Trends in MDC during the summer months were largely absent. We discuss teleconnections of fire activity in the EBZ with Atlantic SST.

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“…Aakala et al (2011) identified droughts and bark beetles to be driving the forest dynamics in the past 200 years in the Arkhangelsk region. Several studies were focused on the forest fire reconstructions (Drobyshev and Niklasson, 2004;Kharitonova and Novenko, 2019;Mergelov et al, 2020;Ryzhkova et al, 2020). Lange et al (2018) found that in Scots pine ring-width and density chronologies at northern sites microsite differences affect the absolute tree growth, but play a minor role for the summer temperature signal.…”

Section: Dendroecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dendrochronology in European Russia in the Early 21st Century: State of the Art

Solomina

Matskovsky

2021

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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In this review, we have focused on the following key points: (1) living trees in European Russia and their climatic sensitivity. Species suitable for tree-ring analyses, their age limits, spatial distribution of temperature- and drought-sensitive trees, and the available tree-ring chronologies. (2) Extension of the living-tree chronologies using archeological and architectural samples. Dendrochronological dating of archeological and cultural monuments. (3) Tree-ring-based climatic reconstructions in European Russia. European Russia drought atlas. (4) Climatic and environmental reconstructions in the Northern Caucasus. (5) Dendroecology. We also briefly summarized the problems and prospects of tree-ring research in European Russia.

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Multi-century reconstruction suggests complex interactions of climate and human controls of forest fire activity in a Karelian boreal landscape, North-West Russia

Cited by 21 publications

References 68 publications

A 500-year history of forest fires in Sala area, central Sweden, shows the earliest known onset of fire suppression in Scandinavia

A 500-year history of forest fires in Sala area, central Sweden, shows the earliest known onset of fire suppression in Scandinavia

Trends and patterns in annually burned forest areas and fire weather across the European boreal zone in the 20th and early 21st centuries

Dendrochronology in European Russia in the Early 21st Century: State of the Art

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