Title
Climatic control of the biomass-burning decline in the Americas after AD 1500
Document Type
Article
Department or Administrative Unit
Geography
Publication Date
1-1-2013
Abstract
The significance and cause of the decline in biomass burning across the Americas after ad 1500 is a topic of considerable debate. We synthesized charcoal records (a proxy for biomass burning) from the Americas and from the remainder of the globe over the past 2000 years, and compared these with paleoclimatic records and population reconstructions. A distinct post-ad 1500 decrease in biomass burning is evident, not only in the Americas, but also globally, and both are similar in duration and timing to ‘Little Ice Age’ climate change. There is temporal and spatial variability in the expression of the biomass-burning decline across the Americas but, at a regional–continental scale, ‘Little Ice Age’ climate change was likely more important than indigenous population collapse in driving this decline.
Recommended Citation
Power, M. J., Mayle, F. E., Bartlein, P. J., Marlon, J. R., Anderson, R. S., Behling, H., Brown, K. J., Carcaillet, C., Colombaroli, D., Gavin, D. G., Hallett, D. J., Horn, S. P., Kennedy, L. M., Lane, C. S., Long, C. J., Moreno, P. I., Paitre, C., Robinson, G., Taylor, Z., & Walsh, M. K. (2012). Climatic control of the biomass-burning decline in the Americas after ad 1500. The Holocene, 23(1), 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683612450196
Journal
The Holocene
Rights
© The Author(s) 2012
Comments
This article was originally published in The Holocene. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.
Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.