Abstract
Severe wildfire seasons in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) raise questions regarding long-term fire dynamics and their drivers. However, data on long-term fire history remains scarce across eastern Siberia. Here we present a composite of reconstructed wildfire dynamics in Yakutia throughout the Holocene, based on eight newly contributed records of macroscopic charcoal in lake sediments in combination with published data. Increased biomass burning occurred in the Early Holocene, c. 10,000 years BP, before shifting to lower levels at c. 6000 years BP. Independent simulations of climate-driven burned area in an individual-based forest model reproduce this reconstructed Holocene trend, but the correlation on multi-centennial timescales turns negative in the Late Holocene. This mismatch suggests that climate alone cannot explain Late Holocene wildfire dynamics. We propose that a human dimension needs to be considered. By example of the settlement of the pastoralist Sakha people c. 800 years BP, we show that implementing reduced fuel availability from Indigenous land management in the forest model leads to increased multi-centennial-scale correlations. This study highlights the need for a better understanding of the poorly reported human dimension of past fire dynamics in eastern Siberia.
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Data availability
The charcoal and radiocarbon age data generated during the current study are available via PANGAEA under https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.974511 (127) and https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.974676 (128). LAVESI-FIRE simulation output data are available via Zenodo under https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14626968 (129).
Code availability
The LAVESI-FIRE model code used during the current study is available via Zenodo under https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17477084 (130).
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Acknowledgements
R.G. was funded by AWI INSPIRES (International Science Program for Integrative Research) and JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) as an International Research Fellow. L.P., E.Z., and I.B. were supported by the framework of science project FSRG-2023-0027. Research was supported by funding from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (DFG; German Research Foundation) to U.H. We thank the team of the German-Russian “Yakutia 2021” expedition. W. Finsinger kindly provided support with R. Thanks to P. Uchanov for help in the laboratory and to everyone supporting sediment core subsampling: J. Courtin, V. Döpper, A. Eichner, L. Enguehard, L. Grimm, S. Haupt, P. Hauter, A. Korup, H.S. Malik, P. Meister, C. Messner, R. Paasch, A. Prasannakumar, K. Schildt, E. Topp-Johnson, and J. Wagner. We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Funds of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.
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U.H., S.K., and L.P. designed and led the fieldwork, supported by R.G. R.G., U.H., E.Z., I.B., and A.S. conducted fieldwork at the lake sites. R.G. designed the charcoal analysis study, supervised by U.H. and E.D. R.G. subsampled the sediment cores. R.G. prepared the age dating process and created the chronologies. R.G. conducted the charcoal-related laboratory work and data analysis, supported by S.T. and E.D. R.G. wrote the initial version of the manuscript, supervised by U.H and supported by A.A. All authors reviewed the initial manuscript.
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Glückler, R., Dietze, E., Andreev, A.A. et al. Human activity may have influenced Holocene wildfire dynamics in boreal eastern Siberia. Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03169-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03169-1
