title: Climate and Fuel Controls on North American Paleofires: Smoldering to Flaming in the Late-glacial-Holocene Transition.
abstract: Smoldering and flaming fires, which emit different proportions of organic (OC) and black carbon (BC, in the form of char and soot), have long been recognized in modern wildfire observations but never in a paleo-record, and little is known about their interactions with climate. Here we show that in the late glacial-early Holocene transition period, when the climate was moist, relatively high quantities of char were deposited in Linsley Pond, Connecticut, USA while soot was more abundant during the warmer and drier early Holocene interval. The highest soot mass accumulation rates (MARs) occurred at the beginning of the Holocene as fuel availability increased through the climatic transition when boreal forests were locally extirpated. These variations with time are related to the different formation pathways of char and soot, which are governed by combustion efficiency. This study provides an approach for differentiating smoldering from flaming combustion in paleo-wildfire reconstructions. Our results suggest that climate and fuel loads control the occurrence of different wildfire types and precipitation may play a key role.
authors: SKLLQG and Key Lab of Aerosol Chemistry &Physics, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710061, China.|Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing 100875, China.|Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.|Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
authors: Y M
authors: YM
authors: Han
authors: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.|NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, NY, NY 10025.
authors: D M
authors: DM
authors: Peteet
authors: SKLLQG and Key Lab of Aerosol Chemistry &Physics, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710061, China.
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Arimoto
authors: SKLLQG and Key Lab of Aerosol Chemistry &Physics, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710061, China.
authors: J J
authors: JJ
authors: Cao
authors: SKLLQG and Key Lab of Aerosol Chemistry &Physics, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710061, China.|Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing 100875, China.
authors: Z S
authors: ZS
authors: An
authors: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Sritrairat
authors: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.
authors: B Z
authors: BZ
authors: Yan