| Autor: |
Tsalickis, Alexandra, Vachula, Richard S., Welch, J. Conner, Campbell, Joshua W., Waters, Matthew N. |
| Předmět: |
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| Zdroj: |
Geophysical Research Letters; 10/16/2024, Vol. 51 Issue 19, p1-9, 9p |
| Abstrakt: |
New approaches are needed to resolve persistent geographic gaps and biases in paleofire research. Most sedimentary paleofire research relies on lake and peat sediments. We present an unconventional sedimentary charcoal record preserved in a modern, post‐bomb bat guano deposit and compare its accumulation to historical fire data. We find strong correlations between charcoal accumulation rates (CHAR) and non‐winter prescribed burns. CHAR in bat guano is more strongly correlated with prescribed fire than wildfire or total area burned, likely due to bats seeking out areas burned by prescribed fire for better foraging opportunities and/or bats avoiding wildfire. We attribute the CHAR in guano being a better recorder of area burned during non‐winter months to winter bat hibernation. Our analyses show that charcoal preserved in bat guano is a reliable paleofire proxy system, which has important implications for the paleofire field and encourages future research using bat guano as a viable archive. Plain Language Summary: Charcoal preserved in sediments can be used to reconstruct fire history. The bulk of these studies focus on traditional sediments (e.g., lakes, peats). We try this out with bat guano, a very unconventional sediment system. By comparing charcoal preserved in guano with historical fire maps, we show that guano charcoal reliably reconstructs fire history. But, it is even better at reconstructing non‐winter fire (due to bat hibernation during the winter) and prescribed fire (due to bats avoiding wildfire and seeking out prescribed fire areas). Our work is an important first step to show that charcoal in bat guano is a reliable method. It also opens new doors for understanding fire history more broadly, due to the seasonal and behavioral uniqueness of bats. Key Points: Fire history is recorded by charcoal in bat guanoBat guano can differentiate human‐set fires from wildfiresBat behavior governs seasonal lens of guano as fire recorder [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Databáze: |
Complementary Index |
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