Ecotone fires3/2/2023 ![]() ![]() The ecological transition from dry forest to grassland (or steppe) at the lower elevations of mountain systems is one of most sensitive regions in the world to the effects of climate-driven and anthropogenic disturbances. ![]() Their policies may differ from this site. Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval). When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH The interdisciplinary approach will improve current qualitative paleoecological and archeological reconstructions, and it will complement insights gained from ecological research underway in the U.S. They will conduct analyses to answer three main questions: (1) What is the nature of past and present fire regimes driven by climate and vegetation conditions? (2) What are the ecological consequences of different land-use practices that require fire? (3) What are the potential vegetation feedbacks that may have reinforced deliberate burning strategies? The proposed data-model framework will help to identify the importance of changes in human land use and slowly varying drivers in climate, and they will help enhance understanding of climate variability and vegetation feedbacks in the mid-latitudes. The investigators will focus on the late Holocene period to gain a better understanding of the controls of fire at a time when climate variability was high and human populations were growing and expanding in the southern hemisphere. It will examine the environmental consequences of fire and assess the biophysical feedbacks of such fires. The project will use new ecosystems modeling approaches to analyze paleoecological and archeological data in order to identify human-related burning activities. ![]() Project results will enhance the capacity of public agencies to better understand impacts of fire and to develop more effective preventive and mitigation procedures. The project also will provide important insights about ecosystem resilience that can inform conservation and resource management of fragile ecoregions in various parts of the world. The project will provide new perspectives, information, insights, and approaches to advance basic understanding of recent fires as well as long-term fire trends in the U.S. The investigators will develop new strategies to advance research about past human-environment dynamics from landscape to regional scales. Because fire is an important natural disturbance, alterations of fire regimes can have significant impacts on vulnerable ecosystems. This research project contributes new knowledge and develops new approaches for understanding fire as a globally significant process, which has long been influenced by climate and humans. Geography and Spatial Sciences, Archaeology, EPSCoR Co-Funding Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:
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