Baseline intrinsic flammability of Earth's ecosystems estimated from paleoatmospheric oxygen over the past 350 million years.

ABSTRACT: Atmospheric oxygen (O(2)) is estimated to have varied greatly throughout Earth's history and has been capable of influencing wildfire activity wherever fuel and ignition sources were present. Fires consume huge quantities of biomass in all ecosystems and play an important role in biogeochemical cycles. This means that understanding the influence of O(2) on past fire activity has far-reaching consequences for the evolution of life and Earth's biodiversity over geological timescales. We have used a strong electrical ignition source to ignite smoldering fires, and we measured their self-sustaining propagation in atmospheres of different oxygen concentrations. These data have been used to build a model that we use to estimate the baseline intrinsic flammability of Earth's ecosystems according

SUBMITTER: Belcher CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3012516 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature