The charcoal record in peat and mineral soil across a boreal landscape and possible linkages to climate change and recent fire history

Abstract

This study combines tree-ring and charcoal data to explore possible drivers of the charcoal record and its spatial variation in a boreal Norwegian forest landscape. Peat and mineral soil samples were collected in a multiple site sampling approach and the amount of charcoal in the peat is related to fire history, Holocene climate variation, major shifts in the vegetation composition, and fuel availability. Dendrochronologic dating was used to reveal the fire history over the last 600 years with spatial and temporal accuracy, and AMS radiocarbon dating of 20 peat columns and their charcoal records from four peatlands was used to elucidate the fire history over the Holocene. The average amount of charcoal was about 2.5 times higher in the mineral soil than in the peat (270 versus 100 g/m2, respectively), and there were considerable between- and within-site variations. There was no relationship between the age of a given peatland and its content of charcoal, nor between the amount of charcoal in a given peatland and in the neighboring mineral soil. Although most of the charcoal mass in the peatlands was found in parts of the peat columns originating from relatively warm climatic periods and from the period before the local establishment of Norway spruce ( Picea abies), charcoal accumulation rates (per 1000 yr) were higher during cold climatic periods and similar before and after spruce establishment. Recent fires showed up to a low degree in the peat columns. On fine spatial scales (1–10 m), fuel quality and distribution together with fire behaviour throughout millennia are likely to be responsible for variations in the charcoal record. On the landscape scale (100–1000 m), the charcoal records were site-specifically idiosyncratic, presumably due to topography, distribution of fire breaks and fuel types, and human land use, coupled with long-term variations inherent in these factors.

Vegetation dynamics and fire history at the southern boundary of the forest vegetation zone in European Russia during the middle and late Holocene

“…7). The reconstructed fire return period agrees well with charcoal data from other peatlands in Northern and Central Europe (Kasin et al, 2013;Robin et al, 2013). Between 7.0 and 5.0 ka BP, fire free intervals were 60-170 years in Finland and 40-100 years in Northern Karelia (Pitkänen et al, 2001).…”

Fire history in a western Fennoscandian boreal forest as influenced by human land use and climate

“…Local peat stratigraphies show that spruce pollen was only present in very low numbers in parts of the study area until about 500 yr BP (Kasin et al. ). Today, a few forest stands hold individual spruce trees with total ages in the range of 400–530 yr (Castagneri et al.…”

Fires of the Last Millennium Led to Landscapes Dominated by Early Successional Species in Québec’s Clay Belt Boreal Forest, Canada

“…They were picked from the petri dish, placed in weighing boats and oven-dried overnight (±50 • C). The mass of charcoal (anthracomass) was determined for each sample using an electronic balance, and data are expressed as anthracomass (mg·2 cm −3 ) [49,50].…”