Abstract
The reconstruction of fire history is essential to understand the palaeoclimate and human history. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been extensively used as a fire marker. In this work, the distribution of PAHs in Borneo peat archives was investigated to understand how PAHs reflect the palaeo-fire activity. In total, 52 peat samples were analysed from a Borneo peat core for the PAH analysis. Pyrogenic PAHs consist of 2–7 aromatic rings, some of which have methyl and ethyl groups. The results reveal that the concentration of pyrogenic PAHs fluctuated with the core depth. Compared to low-molecular-weight (LMW) PAHs, the high-molecular-weight (HMW) PAHs had a more similar depth variation to the charcoal abundance. This finding also suggests that the HMW PAHs were mainly formed at a local fire near the study area, while the LMW PAHs could be transported from remote locations.
Highlights
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files
Our careful investigation of ion chromatograms indicates that there were alkylated homologs (Fig 4) in naphthalene, phenanthrene, pyrene, and chrysene structures, but they were absent in fluorene, fluoranthene, benzo[a]anthracene, indeno[1,2,3-c,d]pyrene, benzo[g,h,i]pyrene, perylene, dibenzo[a,h]anthracene, and coronene
Other compounds are considered the Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) of pyrogenic origin [15, 45, 46]
Summary
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. The chemical composition of the PAHs in sedimentary archives can offer useful information on the material source, combustion temperature, and transportation process [22, 23]. Those compounds (Table 1) that are available in the standard were obtained from Supleco, USA and dissolved with dichloromethane/hexane solvent mixture. The concentration of the PAH compound (Eq 1) was calculated according to the peak area of the compound, response factor, and sample weight as follows: Final fraction volume. The PAH concentration was normalised based on the mean and standard deviation and converted to the z-score before the PCA was performed [40]
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