Calibrating modern charcoal records to reconstruct prehistoric fires in Yellowstone Park
Millspaugh SH and Barnosky CW. 1990. Calibrating modern charcoal records to reconstruct prehistoric fires in Yellowstone Park. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 71(2):256
The Yellowstone fires of 1988 provide an opportunity to study relations between fire and vegetational response on short- and long-term time scales. The surface sediment of small lakes in burned and unburned regions has been collected biannually since October 1988 to trace the introduction of charcoal into the system and its subsequent movement to deep water. Charcoal particles >0.125mm provide the most reliable index of local burn conditions and their distribution is calculated per sediment surface area. Abundance and size of charcoal particles at different water depths are calibrated with type and proximity of the burn. Our results show that most of the charcoal was introduced during the fire as airborne fallout and was carried to shallow water by wind and wave action. Thus, a greater concentration of charcoal is currently associated with near-shore sediments. Charcoal, pollen, and magnetic susceptibility have also been analyzed in short cores to identify fire events of the last ca. 200 years. The stratigraphic fire record is compared to the fire chronology already developed from tree-ring studies in the same catchments.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Millspaugh, Sarah; Barnosky, Cathy
- Units
- YELL
- Keywords
- Ecology, FIRE, Fire History, Lakes and Ponds, Sediment