Paleoecological Fire Regimes and Climate Interactions

Fire has been a fundamental Earth-system process throughout the Quaternary, shaping vegetation patterns, carbon cycling and human landscapes. Paleoecological reconstructions draw on proxies such as sedimentary charcoal, soot and pollen to resolve variations in fire frequency, intensity, extent and type over centuries to millennia. Interactions between climate and fire regimes are complex and bidirectional: climate drivers such as temperature, precipitation and wind regimes determine fuel moisture and availability, while fire modulates albedo, atmospheric composition and post-fire succession. Vegetation both responds to and influences fire behaviour by altering fuel structure, continuity and chemical composition. Human activities, particularly ignitions and land-use changes, have further modified natural fire rhythms at regional scales. Understanding these long-term dynamics provides critical context for anticipating future fire-climate feedbacks under accelerating global warming, informing ecosystem management, carbon accounting and resilience strategies worldwide.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have reconstructed the interplay of fire, vegetation and climate over Holocene timescales in hemi-boreal regions, revealing persistent biomass burning peaks over the past 12,000 years and a marked shift around 7,000 years ago when rising temperatures and increased burn frequency transformed mixed forests into savanna-like landscapes. These findings highlight how past temperature thresholds and fire-vegetation feedbacks led to long-lasting ecosystem reorganisation. In North America, integrated analyses of char and soot deposits have differentiated smouldering and flaming combustion phases during the late-glacial to early Holocene transition. The relative abundance of char versus soot was linked to climatic moisture gradients and fuel loads, demonstrating that combustion efficiency and fire type co-varied with climatic shifts at millennial scales. This approach refines our capacity to interpret palaeofire archives and underscores the role of fuel-driven processes in past and future fire-climate interactions.

Paleoecological Fire Regimes and Climate Interactions publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in paleoecological fire regimes and climate interactions across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Fire regime: The characteristic pattern of fire occurrence, size, seasonality and intensity in a region over time.

Sedimentary charcoal: Carbonaceous particles preserved in lake or peat deposits, serving as proxies for past fire events.

Smouldering vs flaming combustion: Smouldering produces char under low oxygen and moisture, while flaming requires high heat and generates soot.

Fuel load: The quantity and continuity of flammable biomass available to sustain fire.

Fire-return interval: The average time between successive fires at a given location.

References

1. Boreal forest cover was reduced in the mid-Holocene with warming and recurring wildfires. Communications Earth & Environment (2024).
2. Climatic and vegetational controls of Holocene wildfire regimes in the boreal forest of northern Fennoscandia. Journal of Ecology (2023).
3. Fire hazard modulation by long-term dynamics in land cover and dominant forest type in eastern and central Europe. Biogeosciences (2020).
4. Asian inland wildfires driven by glacial–interglacial climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2020).
5. Climate and Fuel Controls on North American Paleofires: Smoldering to Flaming in the Late-glacial-Holocene Transition. Scientific Reports (2016).