Wildfires in the Arctic tundra have become increasingly frequent in recent years and have important implications for tundra ecosystems and for the global carbon cycle. Lake sediment–based records are the primary means of understanding the climatic influences on tundra fires. Sedimentary charcoal has been used to infer climate-driven changes in tundra fire frequency but thus far cannot differentiate characteristics of the vegetation burnt during fire events. In forested ecosystems, charcoal morphologies have been used to distinguish changes in fuel type consumed by wildfires of the past; however, no such approach has been developed for tundra ecosystems. We show experimentally that charcoal morphologies can be used to differentiate graminoid (mean = 6.77; standard deviation (SD) = 0.23) and shrub (mean = 2.42; SD = 1.86) biomass burnt in tundra fire records. This study is a first step needed to construct more nuanced tundra wildfire histories and to understand how wildfire will impact the region as vegetation and fire change in the future.

中文翻译：

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实验生产的木炭的形态区分了北极苔原中的燃料类型

近年来，北极苔原的野火越来越频繁，对苔原生态系统和全球碳循环具有重要影响。基于湖泊沉积物的记录是了解气候对苔原火灾影响的主要手段。沉积木炭已被用于推断苔原火灾频率的气候驱动变化，但迄今为止无法区分火灾事件中燃烧的植被的特征。在森林生态系统中，木炭形态已被用来区分过去野火消耗的燃料类型的变化；然而，还没有为苔原生态系统开发出这样的方法。我们通过实验表明，木炭形态可用于区分禾本科（平均值 = 6.77；标准差 (SD) = 0.23）和灌木（平均值 = 2.42；SD = 1。86) 苔原火灾记录中燃烧的生物质。这项研究是构建更细微的苔原野火历史并了解野火将如何影响该地区作为未来植被和火灾变化所需的第一步。