Spatial variability in Holocene wildfire responses to environmental change in the northern extratropics 

Abstract

<p>Fire is an important environmental and ecological process in northern high latitude environments. It is unclear how fire will respond to modern environmental change in this region and its implications for ecosystem processes and human societies. For insight into the long-term evolution of fire regimes, we reconstruct changes in biomass burning in the northern extratropics (>45°N) from the early Holocene (9000 years ago) to the present using the Reading Palaeofire Database, currently the most comprehensive repository of northern extratropical palaeo charcoal records. We examine the different geographic patterns in fire regimes across the northern extratropics from the sub-continental to circum-northern extratropical scale, by quantitatively comparing biomass burning with insolation, CO<sub>2</sub>,<sub></sub>human population records land cover changes. This study provides novel insight into the fire regimes that have characterized the northern extratropics over the Holocene and the differential importance of environmental controls in shaping these burning histories.</p>