Fire cycles in North American interior grasslands and their relation to prairie drought.

ABSTRACT: High-resolution analyses of a late Holocene core from Kettle Lake in North Dakota reveal coeval fluctuations in loss-on-ignition carbonate content, percentage of grass pollen, and charcoal flux. These oscillations are indicative of climate-fuel-fire cycles that have prevailed on the Northern Great Plains (NGP) for most of the late Holocene. High charcoal flux occurred during past moist intervals when grass cover was extensive and fuel loads were high, whereas reduced charcoal flux characterized the intervening droughts when grass cover, and hence fuel loads, decreased, illustrating that fire is not a universal feature of the NGP through time but oscillates with climate. Spectral and wavelet analyses reveal that the cycles have a periodicity of approximately = 160 yr, although secular trend

SUBMITTER: Brown KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1150278 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature