15 Paleolimnological Records of Climate and Environmental Change

Friday, 28 March 2025
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
170B

CENTRAL APPALACHIAN PALEOFIRE RECONSTRUCTION REVEALS FIRE-CLIMATE-VEGETATION DYNAMICS ACROSS THE LAST GLACIAL-INTERGLACIAL TRANSITION

Paper number: 15-2
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 1:50 PM – 2:10 PM

Authors

Abstract

Understanding fire-climate relationships in eastern North America is difficult due to human impacts on fire in the region. Predicting future wildfire activity in the region is further complicated by the changing climate-vegetation interactions that will accompany anthropogenic climate change. While the end-Pleistocene glacial-interglacial transition provide an informative climate analog to future warming and changing climatic conditions, there are very few paleofire records resolving this period in eastern North America. Here, we present a paleofire record (charcoal and charcoal morphology) from central Appalachia to span the glacial-interglacial transition. We find that fire history of the last 27,000 years was characterized by three distinct periods: (1) the glacial (27 to 17.7 cal kyr BP) with low fire activity burning wood and needle fuels, (2) the deglaciation (17.7 to 11.1 kyr BP) with markedly increased fire activity but unchanged fuel types and vegetation compositions, and (3) the interglacial Holocene (11.1 kyr BP to present) with low fire activity, twig, deciduous leaf, rootlet, and herbaceous fuels, and vegetation-dependent fire activity. We further compare our paleofire data with variables (burned area fraction, precipitation, temperature) from the TraCE-21K-II transient simulation and discuss the feasibility of data-model comparisons in providing insights into fire-climate dynamics. We also place these data in the context of ongoing work in reconstructing fire activity at other sites throughout the eastern United States.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 3

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025NE-408902

© Copyright 2025 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.