DOI: 10.25921/eqwf-se94
title: NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Calder fire data from Whale Lake, Colorado - IMPD USPWL001

description: Many of the largest wildfires in US history burned in recent decades, and climate change explains much of the increase in area burned. The frequency of extreme wildfire weather will increase with continued warming, but many uncertainties still exist about future fire regimes, including how the risk of large fires will persist as vegetation changes. Past fire-climate relationships provide an opportunity to constrain the related uncertainties, and reveal widespread burning across large regions of western North America during past warm intervals. Whether such episodes also burned large portions of individual landscapes has been difficult to determine, however, because uncertainties with the ages of past fires and limited spatial resolution often prohibit specific estimates of past area burned. Accounting for these challenges in a subalpine landscape in Colorado, we estimated century-scale fire synchroneity across 12 lakesediment charcoal records spanning the past 2,000 y. The percentage of sites burned only deviated from the historic range of variability during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) between 1,200 and 850 y B.P., when temperatures were similar to recent decades. Between 1,130 and 1,030 y B.P., 83% (median estimate) of our sites burned when temperatures increased ~0.5 degrees C relative to the preceding centuries. Lake-based fire rotation during the MCA decreased to an estimated 120 y, representing a 260% higher rate of burning than during the period of dendroecological sampling (360 to -60 y B.P.). Increased burning, however, did not persist throughout the MCA. Burning declined abruptly before temperatures cooled, indicating possible fuel limitations to continued burning.
description: Chronology and macroscopic charcoal counts (number of pieces >125 microns) from Whale Lake in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area, Colorado
Provided Keywords: fire climate, warming
Calder et al. includes datasets for twelve sites, including the one documented here. A list of all dataset site names and URLs follow:
Lake Eileen	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/uselk001.txt
Gem Lake	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/usgem001.txt
Gold Creek Lake	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/usgcr001.txt
Hidden Lake near Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/usphd001.txt
Hinman Lake	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/usphn001.txt
Middle Rainbow Lake	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/usprb001.txt
Round Lake near Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/usprd001.txt
Seven Lakes	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/uspsv001.txt
Summit Lake near Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/ussbw001.txt
Teal Lake	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/usptl001.txt
Tiago Lake	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/ustig001.txt
Whale Lake	http://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/charcoal/northamerica/uspwl001.txt

Contact person:	Calder, John
Sample storage location:	University of Wyoming
Sampling date:	9/24/2011
Site size(ha):	3.9
State/Province:	Colorado
Water depth(cm):	1148
Sampling device:	Modified Livingston with a polycarbonate tube
Analysis method:	Macroscopic charcoal counts - see Calder et al. 2015 for details