A 750-year fire history based on lake sediment records in central Yellowstone National Park, USA
- 1 September 1995
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in The Holocene
- Vol. 5 (3), 283-292
- https://doi.org/10.1177/095968369500500303
Abstract
A 750-year fire history was reconstructed for the Central Plateau of Yellowstone National Park from the deep-water sediments of five lakes. The charcoal record from a large lake provided a chronology of regional fires. Data from four small lakes were used to study local and extralocal fires. The co-occurrence of abundant charcoal and high magnetic-susceptibility values at the same stratigraphic level was used as evidence of a local catchment fire, and a charcoal peak without high magnetic susceptibility was ascribed to an extralocal fire or a local fire without a related erosion event. The fire history was compared with the dendrochronologic fire record for the last 450 years, and the close agreement provided the justification to extend the chronology back in time. Large areas of the region burned in AD 1988, c. 1700, c. 1560, and c. 1440. From c. 1220 to 1440 and c. 1700 to 1987, intermediate to small areas burned. The near-absence of fires in the twentieth century prior to the large fires of 1988 is evident in the charcoal record.Keywords
This publication has 35 references indexed in Scilit:
- Postglacial Vegetation and Fire History in the Chirripó Páramo of Costa RicaQuaternary Research, 1993
- Response of alluvial systems to fire and climate change in Yellowstone National ParkNature, 1992
- Fire regimes of western larch – lodgepole pine forests in Glacier National Park, MontanaCanadian Journal of Forest Research, 1991
- Implications of Global Climate Change for Biogeographic Patterns in the Greater Yellowstone EcosystemConservation Biology, 1991
- Fire and Climate Change During the Last 750 Yr in Northwestern MinnesotaEcological Monographs, 1990
- Holocene glacier fluctuations in the American CordilleraQuaternary Science Reviews, 1988
- Stratigraphic Charcoal Analysis on Petrographic Thin Sections: Application to Fire History in Northwestern MinnesotaQuaternary Research, 1988
- Sensitivity of Soil Moisture to Doubling of Carbon Dioxide in Climate Model Experiments. Part I: North AmericaJournal of Climate, 1988
- The calculation of lead-210 dates assuming a constant rate of supply of unsupported 210Pb to the sedimentCATENA, 1978
- Postglacial History of Lost Trail Pass Bog, Bitterroot Mountains, MontanaArctic and Alpine Research, 1977