Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Wildfire Activity, Climate Response, And Ice Core Signal Preservation In The North Pacific Region, Margaret Lonergan

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Wildfires have become more destructive over recent decades with climate change, so understanding how fire regimes will change with further climate change is critical for effective fire management practices. Paleofire records provide insight into how fire regimes have responded to temperature and precipitation variability in the past. Ice cores, such as the Denali ice core from central Alaska, capture regional-scale fire proxies including black carbon at an annual resolution for centuries to millennia. This makes them ideally suited to construct high temporal resolution, regional paleofire records extending back into the Common Era. However, it is critical to understand the instrumental …