Fire activity during the last interglacial from Antarctica ice core

Abstract

A large number of records to reconstruct fire activity during the Holocene are available. Nevertheless, the cause-effect relationship between fire, climate, vegetation and anthropogenic factors is still challenging. Indeed, the early agriculture was developed at the beginning of the Holocene and human practices, such as slash-and-burn, contributed to influence and manage fire occurrence. Therefore, the last interglacial that occurred about 100,000 years BP, represents a valid analogue, where climate was only slightly different from the Holocene, but human activities were basically worldwide absent. Reconstructing fire activity during the last interglacial is still challenging. Charcoal records from lacustrine and marine sediments are limited and oftentimes with a scarce temporal resolution. On the other hand, different archives, such as ice cores are less investigated. In this thesis, I considered the levoglucosan record obtained from the Antarctic ice core collected from Epica Dome C and its trend during the last interglacial. Levoglucosan is a proxy for fire and it can be preserved in ice cores for hundred thousands of years. The comparison with CO2, methane, solar radiation and vegetation reconstructions in this period will contribute to better disentangle the human contribution from the fire-climate-vegetation dynamics.