Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T01:12:48.911Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A 560-Year Record of Santa Ana Fires Reconstructed from Charcoal Deposited in the Santa Barbara Basin, California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Scott A. Mensing ,
Joel Michaelsen  and
Roger Byrne
Scott A. Mensing
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, 89557
Joel Michaelsen
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, 93106
Roger Byrne
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Microscopic charcoal from varved Santa Barbara Basin sediments was used to reconstruct a 560-yr record (A.D. 1425 to 1985) of Santa Ana fires. Comparison of large (>3750 μm2) charcoal with documented fire records in the Santa Barbara Ranger District shows that high accumulations correspond to large fires (>20,000 ha) that occurred during Santa Ana conditions. The charcoal record reconstructed a minimum of 20 large fires in the Santa Barbara region during the study period. The average time between fires shows no distinct change across three different land use periods: the Chumash period, apparently characterized by frequent burning, the Spanish/Early American period with nominal fire control, and the 20th century with active fire suppression. Pollen data support the conclusion that the fire regime has not dramatically changed during the last 500 yr. Comparison of large charcoal particle accumulation rates and precipitation reconstructed from tree rings show a strong relationship between climate and fire history, with large fires consistently occurring at the end of wet periods and the beginning of droughts.

Keywords

Santa Anafire historymicroscopic charcoalSanta Barbara Basinvarved sediments
Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , May 1999 , pp. 295 - 305
Copyright
University of Washington

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailey, H., (1966). Weather of Southern California. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, L.A., (1935). A Record of Forest and Field Fires in California from the Days of Early Explorers to the Creation of the Forest Reserves. USDAForest Service, Washington.Google Scholar
Biondi, F.C., Lange, C.B., Hughes, M.K., Berger, W.H., (1997). Inter-decadal signals during the last millenium (AD 1117–1992) in the varve record of Santa Barbara Basin, California. Geophysical Research Letters 24, 193–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, P., (1976). Fourier Analysis of Time Series: An Introduction. Wiley, New York.Google Scholar
Bradbury, J.P., (1996). Charcoal deposition and redeposition in Elk Lake, Minnesota, USA. The Holocene 6, 339–344.Google Scholar
Bruland, K. W., (1974). Pb-210 Geochronology in the Coastal Environment. University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Byrne, R., Michaelsen, J., Soutar, A., (1977). Fossil charcoal as a measure of wildfire frequency in Southern California: A preliminary analysis. In, Proceedings of the Symposium on the Environmental Consequences of Fire and Fuel Management in Mediterranean Ecosystems, 361, 367, Forest Service, USDA, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Byrne, R., Michaelsen, J., Soutar, A., (1979). Prehistoric wildfire frequencies in the Los Padres National Forest: Fossil charcoal evidence from the Santa Barbara Channel.Google Scholar
Clark, J.S., Cachier, H., Goldammer, J.G., Stocks, B., (1997). Sediment Records of Biomass Burning and Global Change. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, J.S., Royall, D., (1996). Local and regional sediment charcoal evidence for fire regimes in presettlement and north-eastern North America. Journal of Ecology 84, 365–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, R.L., (1984). Effects on charcoal of pollen preparation procedures. Pollen et Spores 26, 559–576.Google Scholar
Cwynar, L.C., (1978). Recent history of fire and vegetation from laminated sediment of Greenleaf Lake, Algonquin Park, Ontario. Canadian Journal of Botany 56, 10–21.Google Scholar
Davis, F.W., Michaelsen, J., (1995). Sensitivity of fire regime in chaparral ecosystems to global climate change. Global Change and Mediterranean-Type Ecosystems. Springer NY, p. 435–456.Google Scholar
Dodge, J. M., (1975). Vegetational Changes Associated with Land Use and Fire History in San Diego County. Univ. of California, Riverside.Google Scholar
Emery, K.O., (1960). The Sea Off Southern California: A Modern Habitat of Petroleum. Wiley and Sons, New York.Google Scholar
Faegri, K., Iversen, J., (1975). Textbook of Pollen Analysis. Hafner, New York.Google Scholar
Fleischer, P., (1972). Mineralogy and sedimentation history Santa Barbara Basin, California. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 42, 49–58.Google Scholar
Haston, L., Michaelsen, J., (1994). Long-term central coastal California precipitation variability and relationships to El-Nino/Southern Oscillation. Journal of Climate 7, 1373–1387.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hickman, J.C., (1993). The Jepson Manual: Higher plants of California. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Horn, S.P., Horn, R.D., Byrne, R., (1992). An automated charcoal scanner for paleoecological studies. Palynology 16, 7–12.Google Scholar
Jenkins, G.M., Watts, D.G., (1968). Spectral Analysis and Its Applications. Holden–Day, Oakland.Google Scholar
Keeley, J. E., (1977). Fire-dependent reproductive strategies in Arctostaphylos and Ceanothus. In, Proceedings of the Symposium on the Environmental Consequences of Fire and Fuel Management in Mediterranean Ecosystems, 391, 396., Forest Service, USDA, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Keeley, J. E., (1982). Distribution of lightning and man-caused wildfires in California. In, Dynamics and Management of Mediterranean Ecosystems, ConradW, C. E.. Oechel, C., 431, 437.Google Scholar
Keeley, J.E., (1992). Demographic structure of California chaparral in the long-term absence of fire. Journal of Vegetation Science 3, 79–90.Google Scholar
Koide, M.A., Soutar, A., Goldberg, E.D., (1972). Marine geochronology with Pb-210. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 14, 442–446.Google Scholar
Krishnaswami, S., Lal, D., Amin, B.S., Soutar, A., (1973). Geochronological studies in Santa Barbara Basin. Limnology and Oceanography 18, 763–770.Google Scholar
MacDonald, G.M., Larsen, C.P.S., Szeicz, J.M., Moser, K.A., (1991). The reconstruction of boreal forest history from lake sediments: A comparison of charcoal, pollen, sedimentological and geochemical indices. Quaternary Science Reviews 10, 53–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mensing, S.A., (1999). 560 years of vegetation change in the region of Santa Barbara, California. Madrono 26, 1–11.Google Scholar
Millspaugh, S.H., Whitlock, C., (1995). A 750-year history based on lake sediment records in central Yellowstone National Park, USA. The Holocene 5, 283–292.Google Scholar
Minnich, R.A., (1983). Fire mosaics in southern California and northern Baja California. Science 219, 1287–1294.Google Scholar
Patterson, W.A., Edwards, K.J., Maguire, D.J., (1987). Microscopic charcoal as a fossil indicator of fire. Quaternary Science Reviews 6, 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sauer, J. D., (1977). Fire history, environmental patterns, and species patterns in Santa Monica Mountain chaparral. In, Proceedings of the Symposium on Environmental Consequences of Fire and Fuel Management in Mediterranean Ecosystems, 383, 386., Forest Service, USDA, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Schimmelmann, A., Lange, C.B., Berger, W.H., (1990). Climatically controlled marker layers in Santa Barbara Basin sediments, and fine-scale core-to-core correlation. Limnology and Oceanography 35, 165–173.Google Scholar
Schimmelmann, A., Lange, C.B., Berger, W.H., Simon, A., Burke, S.K., Dunbar, R.B., (1992). Extreme climatic conditions recorded in Santa Barbara Basin laminated sediments: The 1835–1840Macoma . Marine Geology 106, 279–299.Google Scholar
Soutar, A., Crill, P.A., (1977). Sedimentation and climatic patterns in the Santa Barbara Basin during the 19th and 20th centuries. Geological Society of America Bulletin 88, 1161–1172.Google Scholar
Stockmarr, J., (1971). Tablets with spores used in absolute pollen analysis. Pollen et Spores 13, 615–621.Google Scholar
Swain, A.M., (1973). A history of fire and vegetation in northeastern Minnesota as recorded in lake sediments. Quaternary Research 3, 383–396.Google Scholar
Swain, A.M., (1978). Environmental changes during the past 2,000 years in north-central Wisconsin: Analysis of pollen, charcoal, and seeds from varved lake sediments. Quaternary Research 10, 55–68.Google Scholar
Timbrook, J., Johnson, J.R., Earle, D.D., (1982). Vegetation burning by the Chumash. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 4, 163–186.Google Scholar
Whitlock, C., Millspaugh, S.H., (1996). Testing the assumptions of fire-history studies: An examination of modern charcoal accumulation in Yellowstone National Park, USA. The Holocene 6, 7–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zedler, P.H., Gautier, C.R., McMaster, G.S., (1983). Vegetation change in response to extreme events: The effect of a short interval between fires in California chaparral and coastal scrub. Ecology 64, 809–818.Google Scholar