Biofuels reserve controlled wildfire regimes since the last deglaciation: a record from Gonghai Lake, North China

Wildfire activity is an important activity
in evolution of vegetation and carbon cycling. Whether wet weather will
suppress wildfire or promote them by increasing fuel reserves during the Holocene is not clear. We obtained a record of black carbon
from a sediment core spanning the last 14.8 kyr from Gonghai Lake, in North
China. There is a close relationship between the timing of wildfire activity
and vegetation development driven by the East Asian summer monsoon intensity.
On a millennial timescales, wet climatic conditions provide a sufficient
biofuels reserve, in the same period wildfire increase; thus, the regional
potential biofuels reserve is shown to be an important controlling of regional
wildfire activity in the monsoon region of China, under natural conditions. We
infer that with the strengthening of Asian summer monsoon caused by global
warming, the wildfire carbon emission in Asian monsoon region may increase in
the future.