A chronologically reliable record of 17,000 years of biomass burning in the Lake Victoria area

Temoltzin-Loranca, Yunuen; Gobet, Erika; Vannière, Boris; van Leeuwen, Jacqueline F. N.; Wienhues, Giulia Luise; Szidat, Sönke; Courtney-Mustaphi, Colin; Kishe, Mary; Muschick, Moritz; Seehausen, Ole; Grosjean, Martin; Tinner, Willy (2023). A chronologically reliable record of 17,000 years of biomass burning in the Lake Victoria area. Quaternary science reviews, 301(107915), p. 107915. Elsevier 10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107915

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Fire regimes differ across tropical and subtropical biomes depending on multiple parameters whose interactions and levels of importance are poorly understood, particularly at multidecadal and longer timescales. In the catchment of Lake Victoria, savanna, rainforest, and Afromontane vegetation have interspersed over the last 17,000 years, which may have influenced the fire regime and vice versa. However, climate and humans are most often the primary drivers of fire regime changes, and analysing their respective roles is critical for understanding current and future fire regimes. Besides a handful of radiocarbon dates on grassy charcoal, the timescales of published studies of Lake Victoria sediment chronologies rely mostly on dates of bulk sediment, and chronological disagreements persist, mainly due
to variation between estimations of the 14C reservoir effect. Here, we provide independent 14C chronologies for three Late Glacial and Holocene lacustrine sediment cores from various water depths and compare them with the biostratigraphy to establish a new chronological framework. We present the first continuous sedimentary charcoal records from Lake Victoria; these suggest that fire activity varied substantially during the past 17,000 years. Our new pollen records reveal the long-term vegetation dynamics. The available evidence suggests that before human impact increased during the Iron Age (ca. 2400 yr BP), biomass burning was linked to climate and vegetation reorganizations, such as warming, drying, and the expansion of rainforests and savannas. Our results imply that climate can trigger substantial
fire regime changes and that vegetation responses to climate change can co-determine the fire regime. For instance, biomass burning decreased significantly when the rainforest expanded in response to increasing temperatures and moisture availability. Such insights into the long-term linkages between climate, vegetation, and the fire regime may help to refine ecosystem management and conservation strategies in a changing global climate.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography > Physical Geography > Unit Paleolimnology
10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences (DCBP)
08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography
08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography > Physical Geography
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Palaeoecology
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Aquatic Ecology
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS)

UniBE Contributor:

Temoltzin Loranca, Yunuen, Gobet, Erika, Vannière, Boris, van Leeuwen, Jacqueline Francisca, Wienhues, Giulia Luise, Szidat, Sönke, Muschick, Moritz, Seehausen, Ole, Grosjean, Martin, Tinner, Willy

Subjects:

500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology
500 Science > 540 Chemistry
900 History > 910 Geography & travel
500 Science > 550 Earth sciences & geology
500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)

ISSN:

0277-3791

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Stan Jonah Schouten

Date Deposited:

01 Feb 2023 11:20

Last Modified:

27 Feb 2023 11:08

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107915

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/178154

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/178154

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