New Paper: Using paleoecology to improve reference conditions for ecosystem-based management in western spruce-moss subdomain of Québec

I am very pleased to shared the first paper of Andy Hennebelle PhD dealing with management and paleoecology in the spruce forest of Québec: 

Hennebelle A., Grondin P., Aleman J. C., Ali A. A., Bergeron Y., Borcard D., & Blarquez O. 2018. Using paleoecology to improve reference conditions for ecosystem-based management in western spruce-moss subdomain of Québec. Forest Ecology and Management, 430, 157–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.08.007 

Abstract:

New Paper: The climate, the fuel and the land use: long-term regional variability of biomass burning in boreal forests

I am very happy to share this new paper about fire regime variability between Scandinavia and North America by Chiara Molinari and colleagues:

Molinari C., Lehsten V., Blarquez O., Carcaillet C., Davis B. A. S., Kaplan J. O., Clear J., Bradshaw R. H. W. 2018. The climate, the fuel and the land use: long-term regional variability of biomass burning in boreal forests. Global Change Biology, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14380 

Abstract

New paper: Guidelines for the use and interpretation of palaeofire reconstructions based on various archives and proxies

I am pleased to share this recent article by Cecile Remy and colleagues on the comparison of charcoal records using various archives:

Remy C. C., Fouquemberg C., Asselin H., Andrieux B., Magnan G., Brossier B., Grondin P., Bergeron Y., Talon B., Girardin M. P., Blarquez O., Bajolle L., Ali A. A. (2018). Guidelines for the use and interpretation of palaeofire reconstructions based on various archives and proxies. Quaternary Science Reviews, 193, 312-322.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.06.010 

Abstract

We present a comparative analysis of fire reconstructions from tree rings and from wood charcoal preserved in forest soils, peat and lake sediments. Our objective is to highlight the benefits and limits of different archives and proxies to reconstruct fire histories. We propose guidelines to optimize proxy and archive choice in terms of spatial and temporal scales of interest. Comparisons were performed for two sites in the boreal forest of northeastern North America. Compared to others archives, tree-ring analysis remains the best choice to reconstruct recent fires (<1000 years). For longer periods (from several centuries to millennia), lake charcoal can be used to reconstruct regional or local fire histories depending on the method used, but the focus should be on historical trends rather than on the identification of individual fire events. Charcoal preserved in peat and soils can be used to identify individual fire, but sometimes cover shorter time periods than lake archives.

Workshop Report: Paleofire knowledge for current and future ecosystem management

Read our last report in Past Global Changes Magazine available here: http://pastglobalchanges.org/products/pages-magazine/12456

Blarquez O., Grondin P. and the GPWG2. 2018. Paleofire knowledge for current and future ecosystem management. Past Global Changes Magazine, vol. 26(1), 40 https://doi.org/10.22498/pages.26.1 

WORKSHOP REPORT: Applying paleofire records in ecological management

We are very glad to share the last report from the GPWG2 Montreal Workshop that is now published in Wildfire Magazine.

WORKSHOP REPORT: Applying paleofire records in ecological management, by: Kendrick J. Brown – Natural Resources Canada, Mitchell J. Power – University of Utah, Michal Słowiński – Polish Academy of Sciences, Andri C. Van Aardt – University of the Free State, Olivier Blarquez – Université de Montréal, Pierre Grondin – Ministère de la Forêt, de la Faune et des Parcs.

You can read the workshop report below or directly on Wildfire Magazine Here.

New paper: Late Holocene influence of societies on the fire regime in southern Québec temperate forests

I am really happy to share our last paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews with students and colleagues from the Department of Geography and Anthropology of UdeM:

Blarquez O., Talbot J., Paillard J., Lapointe-Elmrabti L., Pelletier N., Gates St-Pierre C. 2018. Late Holocene influence of societies on the fire regime in southern Québec temperate forests. Quaternary Science Reviews 180: 63–74. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2017.11.022  

Data will follow soon… 

Abstract: Climatic change that occurred during the Holocene is often recognized as the main factor for explaining fire dynamics, while the influence of human societies is less apparent. In eastern North America, human influence on fire regime before European settlement has been debated, mainly because of a paucity of sites and paleoecological techniques that can distinguish human influences unequivocally from climate. We applied a multiproxy analysis to a 12 000-year-old paleoecological sequence from a site in the vicinity of known settlement areas that were occupied over more than 7000 years. From this analysis, we were able detect the human influence on the fire regime before and after European colonization. Fire occurrence and fire return intervals (FRI) were based on analysis of sedimentary charcoals at a high temporal and spatial resolution. Fire occurrence was then compared to vegetation that was reconstructed from pollen analysis, from population densities deduced from archeological site dating, from demographic and technological models, and from climate reconstructed using general circulation models and ice-core isotopes. Holocene mean FRI was short (164 ± 134 years) and associated with small charcoal peaks that were likely indicative of surface fires affecting small areas. After 1500 BP, large vegetation changes and human demographic growth that was demonstrated through increased settlement evidence likely caused the observed FRI lengthening (301 ± 201 years), which occurred without significant changes in climate. Permanent settlement by Europeans in the area around 1800 AD was followed by a substantial demographic increase, leading to the establishment of Gatineau, Hull and Ottawa. This trend was accompanied by a shift in the charcoal record toward anthropogenic particles that were reflective of fossil fuel burning and an apparent absence of wood charcoal that would be indicative of complete fire suppression. An anthropogenic fire regime that was characterized by severe and large fires and long fire-return intervals occurred more than 1000 years ago, concomitant with the spread of native agriculture, which intensified with European colonization over the past two centuries.

Winter is coming

Notre dernière étude publiée dans New Phytologist fait la couverture du journal!

Le blog du journal nous fait également l’honneur d’un article par Mike Whitfield que vous trouverez ici: https://www.newphytologist.org/blog/behind-the-cover-new-phytologist-2164-december-2017/ 

Et repris ci dessous:

Winter has come to Lake Miroir. Below the surface, deep down in the dark, the lakebed sediments tell a story of ice and fire.

These days, snow covers the landscape from December to April, but this hasn’t always been the case. This lake contains sediments from the last glaciation, which ended about 15,000 years ago in the Alps. Interestingly these sediments contain proof of a glacial refugia of trees: cembra pines and larch. Trees survived the deep glacial winter here in isolation.

The snowy scene on the cover of New Phytologist 216:4 represents a site that contains proof of an extraordinary interplay between fire and vegetation in a periglacial environment. Christopher Carcaillet and Olivier Blarquez studied lake sediments nine metres below the surface. In their New Phytologistpaper, they describe how they discovered evidence of fire amid the ice. This refuge burned, with a very low frequency of about one fire per 1000 years. This is the first evidence of fire at such high altitude during glacial times, which were cold and dry.

Today, fire is about three times more frequent, with one fire every 300 years or so. The vegetation is naturally dominated by larch with cembra pines. While larch abound today, during glacial times the cembra pines were dominant. Carcaillet and Blarquez observed that when the vegetation switched from pine dominant to larch dominant, fires became more frequent. These results suggest that vegetation and fire interact, fire controlling the abundance of larch over cembra pine.

Christopher Carcaillet’s research focuses on determining the long-term relative influences of climate and social processes on the pattern of plant communities (e.g. biodiversity) or ecosystem dynamics through changes in disturbance regimes (such as fire, snow avalanche, or insect outbreak). Seeking similar evidence to that found at Lake Miroir, the researchers investigated a similar lake in the same region. While it also contains glacial sediments, it provides no evidence of trees nor of fire. This comparison shows that glacial climate does not prevent the occurrence of fires, but suggests that trees are needed to allow fires to ignite and spread.

Carcaillet and Blarquez’s research suggests that trees may have survived the long glacial winter in Europe in more places than previously thought. Despite finding refuge from the ice, however, they may not have been safe from fire.

Mike Whitfield
Development Coordinator
New Phytologist

Read the paper: Carcaillet, C. and Blarquez, O. (2017) Fire ecology of a tree glacial refugium on a nunatak with a view on Alpine glaciers. New Phytologist. doi: 10.1111/nph.14721

New paper: Paleofire Dynamics in Central Spain During the Late Holocene: the Role of Climatic and Anthropogenic Forcing

I am very pleased to share this new article with José Antonio López-Sáez and colleagues: DOI:10.1002/ldr.2751 about the fire history of a mountain range in central Spain.  

Abstract:

The use of fire and, consequently, its severity and incidence on the environment, has grown steadily during the last millennia throughout the Mediterranean. This issue can be assessed in several mountain ranges of central Iberia where changes in the management policy on anthropic activities and exploitation of high-mountain environments have promoted a remarkable increase on fire frequency. Our research focuses on fire dynamics throughout the last three thousand years from three peat bog charcoal records of the Gredos range (central Iberia). Our aim is to reconstruct past fire regimes according to forest vegetation typology (Castanea sativa, Pinus pinaster, P. sylvestris). Charcoal influx shows low values between 3140 and 1800 cal. yr BP when forests were relatively dense both in high and mid-mountain areas. Fire appeared synchronous between 1800 and 1700 cal. yr BP for Lanzahíta and Serranillos and around 1400-1240 cal. yr BP for the three sites suggesting anthropogenic fire control between the Late Roman and the Visigothic periods that can be related to the cultivation of olive trees in the valleys and a greater human impact in high-mountain areas. By contrast, during the Muslim period (1240-850 cal. yr BP) fire dynamics becomes asynchronous. Later, fires turn again coeval in the Gredos range during the Christian period (850-500 cal. yr BP) and can be also correlated with drought phases during the Late Medieval Warm Episode. In short, our study demonstrates that fire activity has been enormously variable during the late Holocene in response to both short- and long-term regional and global climate, vegetation dynamics and land use changes.

New paper: Global Modern Charcoal Dataset (GMCD): A tool for exploring proxy-fire linkages and spatial patterns of biomass burning

I am very pleased to share this article by Donna Hawthorne, Colin J. Courtney Mustaphi, Julie Aleman et al. on a new tool and data repository the Global Modern Charcoal Dataset which is currently in development by the GPWG and colleagues working in paleofire research. The GMCD is a unique opportunity to develop paleofire research and achieve charcoal calibration in sediment which should bring new discussion opportunities amongst paleoecologist, modern ecologist, modellers and managers. Stay tuned for developments at http://www.gpwg.paleofire.org. Link to pdf

Abstract:  Progresses in reconstructing Earth’s history of biomass burning has motivated the development of a modern charcoal dataset covering the last decades through a community-based initiative called the Global Modern Charcoal Dataset (GMCD). As the frequency, intensity and spatial scale of fires are predicted to increase regionally and globally in conjunction with changing climate, anthropogenic activities and land-use patterns, there is an increasing need to further understand, calibrate and interrogate recent and past fire regimes as related to changing fire emissions and changing carbon sources and sinks. Discussions at the PAGES Global Paleofire Working Group workshop 2015, including paleoecologists, numerical modelers, statisticians, paleoclimatologists, archeologists, and anthropologists, identified an urgent need for an open, standardized, quality-controlled and globally representative dataset of modern sedimentary charcoal and other sediment-based fire proxies. This dataset fits into a gap between metrics of biomass burning indicators, current fire regimes and land cover, and carbon emissions inventories. The dataset will enable the calibration of paleofire data with other modern datasets including: data of satellite derived fire occurrence, vegetation patterns and species diversity, land cover change, and a range of sources capturing biochemical cycling. Standardized protocols are presented for collecting and analyzing sediment-based fire proxies, including charcoal, levoglucosan, black carbon, and soot. The GMCD will provide a publically-accessible repository of modern fire sediment surface samples in all terrestrial ecosystems. Sample collection and contributions to the dataset will be solicited from lacustrine, peat, marine, glacial, or other sediments, from a wide variety of ecosystems and geographic locations.

Ref: Hawthorne, D., Courtney Mustaphi, C. J., Aleman, J. C., Blarquez, O., Colombaroli, D., Daniau, A.-L., Marlon, J. R., Power, M., Vannière, B., Han, Y., Hantson, S., Kehrwald, N., Magi, B., Yue, X., Carcaillet, C., Marchant, R., Ogunkoya, A., Githumbi, E. N. and Muriuki, R. M. (no date) ‘Global Modern Charcoal Dataset (GMCD): A tool for exploring proxy-fire linkages and spatial patterns of biomass burning’, Quaternary International. doi: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.03.046.