We have identified areas of the southwestern US that do not contain paleorecords of precipitation, fire, and/or human activity. These records may be missing because, for example, lakes and forests are few and far between in much of the southwestern US. However, other sites exist that do not yet have paleorecords, but do have potential for providing lake cores and tree ring records.
We aim to create a dendrochronology record from the San Luis Valley and Sangre de Cristo Mountains, CO examining links between hydroclimate and human interactions. (Our Fire, human activity, and climate records in SW US sediments research also links to this aim).
Did we start the fire? Climate, Fire and Humans
Fire and vegetation changes recorded in Alaskan ice cores
Fire, human activity, and climate records in southwestern US sediments
- Overview
We have identified areas of the southwestern US that do not contain paleorecords of precipitation, fire, and/or human activity. These records may be missing because, for example, lakes and forests are few and far between in much of the southwestern US. However, other sites exist that do not yet have paleorecords, but do have potential for providing lake cores and tree ring records.
We aim to create a dendrochronology record from the San Luis Valley and Sangre de Cristo Mountains, CO examining links between hydroclimate and human interactions. (Our Fire, human activity, and climate records in SW US sediments research also links to this aim).
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.USGS Geologist Natalie Kehrwald takes a tree ring sample. Tree rings can provide sub-seasonal records of hydroclimate and fire over centennial time scales.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. Visit Media to see details.Landscape-scale fire and wind damage to tree stands on the Trinchera Ranch, Colorado - Science
Did we start the fire? Climate, Fire and Humans
The past decade encompasses some of the most extensive fire activity in recorded history. An area the size of Vermont (~24,000 km2) burned in a single Siberian fire in the summer of 2019 (Kehrwald et al., 2020 and references therein) while Australia, Indonesia and the Amazon have all experienced their most intense fires in recorded history (van Wees et al, 2021 and references therein). As more...Fire and vegetation changes recorded in Alaskan ice cores
The past decade has comprised major fires in central Alaska and Siberia. Fire histories from ice cores in the North Pacific (Denali and the Juneau Icefield) record interactions between changing temperature, precipitation, and biomass burning. We aim to quantify what vegetation burned in the past (hardwoods versus softwoods versus grasses) using ratios of levoglucosan, mannosan and galactosan, and...Fire, human activity, and climate records in southwestern US sediments
This research aims to determine if climate change or human activity was the primary driver of fire activity in southwestern Colorado.