Reconstruction of fire regimes through integrated paleoecological proxy data and ecological modeling

Fire is a key ecological process affecting vegetation dynamics and land cover. The characteristic frequency, size, and intensity of fire are driven by interactions between top-down climate-driven and bottom-up fuel-related processes. Disentangling climatic from non-climatic drivers of past fire regimes is a grand challenge in Earth systems science, and a topic where both paleoecology and ecological modeling have made substantial contributions. In this manuscript, we (1) review the use of sedimentary charcoal as a fire proxy and the methods used in charcoal-based fire history reconstructions; (2) identify existing techniques for paleoecological modeling; and (3) evaluate opportunities for coupling of paleoecological and ecological modeling approaches to better understand the causes and consequences of past, present, and future fire activity.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Frontiers in Plant Science

• Publication date

  2015-01-22

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3389/fpls.2014.00785PMID 25657652PMCID 4302794
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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