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Paleofire reconstruction based on an ensemble‐member strategy applied to sedimentary charcoal
Author(s) -
Blarquez Olivier,
Girardin Martin P.,
Leys Bérangère,
Ali Adam A.,
Aleman Julie C.,
Bergeron Yves,
Carcaillet Christopher
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/grl.50504
Subject(s) - charcoal , char , smoothing , fire regime , environmental science , biome , taiga , sedimentary rock , computer science , geology , statistics , mathematics , coal , paleontology , chemistry , archaeology , forestry , geography , ecology , organic chemistry , ecosystem , biology
Paleofire events obtained from the statistical treatment of sedimentary charcoal records rely on a number of assumptions and user's choices, increasing the uncertainty of reconstructio\ns. Among the assumptions made when analyzing charcoal series is the choice of a filtering method for raw Charcoal Accumulation Rate (CHAR raw ). As there is no ultimate CHAR raw filtering method, we propose an ensemble‐member approach to reconstruct fire events. We modified the commonly used procedure by including a routine replicating the analysis of a charcoal record using custom smoothing parameters. Dates of robust fire events, uncertainties in fire‐return intervals and fire frequencies are derived from members' distributions. An application of the method is used to quantify uncertainties due to data treatment in two CHAR raw sequences from two different biomes, subalpine and boreal.