Climatic and vegetational controls of Holocene wildfire regimes in the boreal forest of northern Fennoscandia

Abstract

Abstract Climate change is expected to increase wildfire activity in boreal ecosystems, thus threatening the carbon stocks of these forests, which are currently the largest terrestrial carbon sink in the world. Describing the ecological processes involved in fire regimes in terms of frequency, size, type (surface vs. crown) and severity (biomass burned) would allow better anticipation of the impact of climate change on these forests. In Fennoscandia, this objective is currently difficult to achieve due to the lack of knowledge of long‐term (centuries to millennia) relationships between climate, fire and vegetation. We investigated the causes and consequences of changes in fire regimes during the Holocene (last ~11,000 years) on vegetation trajectories in the boreal forest of northern Finland. We reconstructed fire histories from sedimentary charcoal at three sites, as well as vegetation dynamics from pollen, moisture changes from Sphagnum spore abundance at two sites, and complemented these analyses with published regional chironomid‐inferred July temperature reconstructions. Low‐frequency, large fires were recorded during the warm and dry mid‐Holocene period (8500–4500 cal. year BP), whereas high‐frequency, small fires were more characteristic of the cool and wet Neoglacial period (4500 cal. year BP onward). A higher proportion of charcoal particles with a woody aspect—characterizing crown fires—was recorded at one of the two sites at times of significant climatic and vegetational changes, when the abundance of Picea abies was higher. Synthesis. Our results show both a direct and an indirect effect of climate on fire regimes in northern Fennoscandia. Warm and dry periods are conducive to large surface fires, whereas cool and moist periods are associated with small fires, either crown or surface. Climate‐induced shifts in forest composition also affect fire regimes. Climatic instability can alter vegetation composition and structure and lead to fuel accumulation favouring stand‐replacing crown fires. Considering the ongoing climate warming and the projected increase in extreme climatic events, Fennoscandian forests could experience a return to a regime of large surface fires, but stand‐replacing crown fires will likely remain a key ecosystem process in areas affected by climatic and/or vegetational instability.