We evaluated the skills of different palaeofire reconstruction techniques to reconstruct the fire history of a boreal landscape (Russian Karelia) affected by surface fires. The analysis of dated lacustrine sediments from two nearby lakes was compared with independent dendrochronological dating of fire scars, methods which have rarely been used in context of surface fires. We used two sediment sub-sampling volumes (1 and 3.5 cm3, wet volumes) and three methods of calculating the Charcoal Accumulation Rate to reconstruct fire histories: CHAR number, charcoal surface area and estimated charcoal volume. The results show that palaeofire reconstructions obtained with fossil charcoal data from lake sediments and dendrochronology are similar and complementary. Dendrochronological reconstruction of fire scars established 12 fire dates over the past 500 years, and paleo-data from lake sediments identified between 7 and 13 fire events. Several ‘false fire events’ were also recorded in the charcoal chronologies, likely because of errors associated with the estimation of the sediment accumulation rate in the unconsolidated part of the sediment. The number of replicates, that is, number of sub-samples and lakes analyzed, had an effect on the number of identified fire events, whereas no effect was seen in the variation in the analyzed sediment volume or the choice of the charcoal-based metric. Whenever possible, we suggest the use of the dendrochronological data as an independent control for the calibration of charcoal peak series, which helps provide more realistic millennia-long reconstruction of past fire activity. We also argue for the use of 1 cm3 sample volume, a sampling protocol involving sampling of more than one lake, and sufficient number of intra-sample replicates to achieve skilful reconstructions of past fire activity.

中文翻译：

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湖泊木炭峰提供了北欧北方森林地表野火的准确记录

我们评估了不同古火重建技术的技能，以重建受地表火灾影响的北方景观（俄罗斯卡累利阿）的火灾历史。对来自附近两个湖泊的湖泊沉积物的测年分析与火痕的独立树木年代学测年进行了比较，这些方法很少用于地表火灾的背景下。我们使用了两个沉积物子采样体积（1 和 3.5 cm3，湿体积）和三种计算木炭积累率的方法来重建火灾历史：CHAR 数、木炭表面积和估计的木炭体积。结果表明，利用湖泊沉积物和树木年代学的化石木炭数据获得的古火重建具有相似性和互补性。火灾疤痕的树木年代学重建确定了过去 500 年的 12 个火灾日期，以及确定了 7 到 13 次火灾事件的湖泊沉积物的古数据。木炭年表中还记录了一些“虚假火灾事件”，这可能是由于与沉积物未固结部分的沉积物积累率估计相关的错误。重复的数量，即分析的子样本和湖泊的数量，对确定的火灾事件的数量有影响，而在分析的沉积物体积的变化或基于木炭的指标的选择中没有看到影响. 只要有可能，我们建议使用树木年代学数据作为木炭峰系列校准的独立控制，这有助于对过去的火灾活动提供更真实的数千年重建。我们还主张使用 1 cm3 样本体积、一种涉及对一个以上湖泊进行采样的采样协议，以及足够数量的样本内重复，以实现对过去火灾活动的熟练​​重建。