Regional variability in peatland burning at mid-to high-latitudes during the Holocene
Sim, Thomas G.
University of Leeds
Swindles, Graeme T.
Queens University Belfast
Morris, Paul J.
University of Leeds
Baird, Andy J.
University of Leeds
V. Gallego-Sala, Angela
University of Exeter
Wang, Yuwan
University of Exeter
Blaauw, Maarten
Queens University Belfast
Camill, Philip
Bowdoin College
Garneau, Michelle
Geotop Univ Quebec Montreal
Hardiman, Mark
University of Portsmouth
Loisel, Julie
Texas A&M University System
Valiranta, Minna
Anderson, Lysanna
Apolinarska, Karina
Augustijns, Femke
Aunina, Liene
Beaulne, Joannie
Geotop Univ Quebec Montreal
Bobek, Premysl
Borken, Werner
Broothaerts, Nils
Cui, Qiao-Yu
Davies, Marissa A.
Ejarque, Ana
Farrell, Michelle
Feeser, Ingo
Feurdean, Angelica
Fewster, Richard E.
University of Leeds
Finkelstein, Sarah A.
Gaillard, Marie-Jose
University of Queensland
Gaika, Mariusz
Heffernan, Liam
Hoevers, Renske
Jones, Miriam
Juselius-Rajamaki, Teemu
Karofeld, Edgar
Knorr, Klaus-Holger
Korhola, Atte
Kupriyanov, Dmitri
Kylander, Malin E.
Lacourse, Terri
Lamentowicz, Mariusz
Lavoie, Martin
Lemdahl, Geoffrey
Lucow, Dominika
Magnan, Gabriel
Geotop Univ Quebec Montreal
Maksims, Alekss
Marcisz, Katarzyna
Marinova, Elena
Mathijssen, Paul J. H.
Mauquoy, Dmitri
Mazei, Yuri A.
Mazei, Natalia
McCarroll, Julia
McCulloch, Robert D.
Milner, Alice M.
Miras, Yannick
Mitchell, Fraser J. G.
Novenko, Elena
Pelletier, Nicolas
Peros, Matthew C.
Piilo, Sanna R.
Pilote, Louis-Martin
Geotop Univ Quebec Montreal
Primeau, Guillaume
Geotop Univ Quebec Montreal
Rius, Damien
Robin, Vincent
Robitaille, Mylene
Geotop Univ Quebec Montreal
Roland, Thomas P.
University of Exeter
Ryberg, Eleonor
Sannel, A. Britta K.
Schittek, Karsten
Servera-Vives, Gabriel
Shotyk, William
Slowinski, Michal
Stivrins, Normunds
Swinnen, Ward
Thompson, Gareth
University of Exeter
Tiunov, Alexei
Tsyganov, Andrey N.
Tuittila, Eeva-Stiina
Verstraeten, Gert
Wallenius, Tuomo
Webb, Julia
Willard, Debra
Yu, Zicheng
Zaccone, Claudio
Zhang, Hui
Journal
Quaternary Science Reviews
ISSN
0277-3791
1873-457X
Open Access
hybrid
Volume
305
Northern peatlands store globally-important amounts of carbon in the form of partly decomposed plant detritus. Drying associated with climate and land-use change may lead to increased fire frequency and severity in peatlands and the rapid loss of carbon to the atmosphere. However, our understanding of the patterns and drivers of peatland burning on an appropriate decadal to millennial timescale relies heavily on individual site-based reconstructions. For the first time, we synthesise peatland macrocharcoal re-cords from across North America, Europe, and Patagonia to reveal regional variation in peatland burning during the Holocene. We used an existing database of proximal sedimentary charcoal to represent regional burning trends in the wider landscape for each region. Long-term trends in peatland burning appear to be largely climate driven, with human activities likely having an increasing influence in the late Holocene. Warmer conditions during the Holocene Thermal Maximum (similar to 9e6 cal. ka BP) were associated with greater peatland burning in North America's Atlantic coast, southern Scandinavia and the Baltics, and Patagonia. Since the Little Ice Age, peatland burning has declined across North America and in some areas of Europe. This decline is mirrored by a decrease in wider landscape burning in some, but not all sub-regions, linked to fire-suppression policies, and landscape fragmentation caused by agricultural expansion. Peatlands demonstrate lower susceptibility to burning than the wider landscape in several instances, probably because of autogenic processes that maintain high levels of near-surface wetness even during drought. Nonetheless, widespread drying and degradation of peatlands, particularly in Europe, has likely increased their vulnerability to burning in recent centuries. Consequently, peatland restoration efforts are important to mitigate the risk of peatland fire under a changing climate. Finally, we make recommendations for future research to improve our understanding of the controls on peatland fires.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).