Data archive for: Fire-regime variability and ecosystem resilience over four millennia in a Rocky Mountain subalpine watershed

Wildfires strongly influence forest ecosystem processes, including carbon and nutrient cycling and vegetation dynamics. As fire activity increases under changing climate conditions, the ecological and biogeochemical resilience of many forest ecosystems remains unknown. To investigate the resilience of forest ecosystems to changing climate and wildfire activity over decades to millennia, we developed a 4800-yr high-resolution lake-sediment record from Silver Lake, Montana, USA (47.360° N, 115.566° W). Charcoal particles, pollen grains, element concentrations, and stable isotopes of C and N serve as proxies of past changes in fire, vegetation, and ecosystem processes such as nitrogen cycling and soil erosion, within a small subalpine forest watershed. A published lake-level history from Silver Lake provides a local record of paleohydrology. A trend toward increased effective moisture over the late Holocene coincided with a distinct shift in the pollen assemblage c. 1900 yr BP, resulting f...