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Fire risk modulation by long-term dynamics in land cover and dominant forest type in Eastern and Central Europe

Angelica Feurdean 1 Boris Vannière 2 Walter Finsinger 3 Dan Warren 1 Simon Connor Matthew Forrest 4 Johan Liakka 5 Andrei Panait 6 Christian Werner 7 Maja Andrič 8 Premysl Bobek 9 Vachel Carter 10 Basil Davis 11 Andrei-Cosmin Diaconu 6 Elisabeth Dietze 12 Ingo Feeser 13 Gabriela Florescu 6, 10 Mariusz Gałka 14 Thomas Giesecke 15 Susanne Jahns 16 Eva Jamrichová Katarzyna Kajukało 17 Jed Kaplan 18 Monika Karpińska-Kołaczek 17 Piotr Kołaczek 17 Petr Kuneš 10 Dimitry Kupriyanov Mariusz Lamentowicz 19 Carsten Lemmen 20 Enikö Magyari 21, 22, 23 Katarzyna Marcisz 19 Elena Marinova 24 Aidin Niamir 1 Elena Novenko Milena Obremska 25 Anna Pędziszewska 26 Mirjam Pfeiffer 27 Anneli Poska 28 Manfred Rösch Michal Słowiński 29 Miglė Stančikaitė 30 Marta Szal 31 Joanna Święta-Musznicka 26 Ioan Tanţău Martin Theuerkauf 32 Spassimir Tonkov 33 Orsolya Valkó Juri Vassiljev 10 Siim Veski 34 Ildiko Vincze 23, 21, 22 Agnieszka Wacnik 35 Julian Wiethold 36, 37 Thomas Hickler 1
1 SBiK-F - Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre
2 LCE - Laboratoire Chrono-environnement - CNRS - UFC (UMR 6249)
3 UMR ISEM - Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier
4 Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
5 NERSC - Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center [Bergen]
6 UBB - Babes-Bolyai University [Cluj-Napoca]
7 Heidelberg University
8 ZRC SAZU - Institut za arheologijo
9 IB / CAS - Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences
10 Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University
11 Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics [Lausanne]
12 GFZ - GeoForschungsZentrum - Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam
13 Institut fûr Ur- und Frühgeschichte
14 UAM - Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
15 Department of Palynology and Climate Dynamics
Department of Palynology and Climate Dynamics
16 Brandenburgisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologisches Landesmuseum
17 Institute of Geoecology and Geoinformation
18 ARVE
19 Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and Monitoring, Faculty of Geographical and Geological Sciences
20 GKSS - Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht
21 MTA-MTM-ELTE Research Group for Paleontology
ELTE - Eötvös Loránd University, MTA - Hungarian Academy of Sciences
22 GINOP Sustainable Ecosystem Research Group
MTA Centre for Ecological Research [Tihany]
23 Department of Environmental and Landscape Geography
24 Landesdenkmalamt
25 Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
26 Department of Plant Ecology, Gdansk University
27 BIK-F - Senckenberg biodiversität und klima forschungszentrum
28 Institute of Geology
29 Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Sciences
30 Nature Research Centre [Vilnius]
31 Department of Palaeobotany, Institute of Biology
32 Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology
33 University of Sofia
34 Institute of Geology at Tallinn
35 Department of Palaeobotany, W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences
36 Inrap - Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives
37 ARTeHiS - Archéologie, Terre, Histoire, Sociétés [Dijon]
Abstract : Wildfire occurrence is influenced by climate, vegetation and human activities. A key challenge for understanding fire-climate-vegetation interactions is to quantify the effect vegetation has in mediating fire regime. Here, we explore the relative importance of Holocene land cover and dominant functional forest type, and climate dynamics on biomass burned in temperate and boreo-nemoral regions of Central and Eastern Europe over the past 12 ka BP years. We used an extensive data set of Holocene pollen and sedimentary charcoal records, in combination with climate simulations and novel statistical modelling. Biomass burned was highest during the early Holocene and lowest during the mid Holocene in all three ecoregions, but diverged more markedly over the past 3-4 ka BP. Although the climate was an important driver of fire hazard during the warm and dry early Holocene, tree cover was consistently the strongest predictor of past biomass burning. In temperate forests, biomass burned was high at ~ 45% tree cover and decreased strongly towards 60% tree cover. In needleleaf dominated forests, biomass burned was highest at ~60-65% tree cover and abruptly declined at >65% tree cover. Biomass burned also increased when arable lands and grasslands reached ~15-20%, although this relationship was highly dynamic depending on land use intensity throughout ignition and fuel type and availability. Our observations cover the full range of Holocene climate variability and land cover changes and illustrates that percentages of land cover is a key predictor of the probability of fire occurrence over timescales of centuries to millennia. We suggest that long-term fire risk may be effectively reduced through land cover management, given that land cover has controlled fire regimes under the dynamic climates of the Holocene.
Keywords : Fire hazard tree cover biomass burning Holocene Human impact
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Angelica Feurdean, Boris Vannière, Walter Finsinger, Dan Warren, Simon Connor, et al.. Fire risk modulation by long-term dynamics in land cover and dominant forest type in Eastern and Central Europe. Biogeosciences Discussions, European Geosciences Union, 2019, ⟨10.5194/bg-2019-260⟩. ⟨hal-02294160⟩

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