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What can wildfires of the past tell us about wildfires of the future? New research examining ancient pollen and spores across Europe finds out.
Artist impression of the end-Triassic fern spike interval. Weeding and pioneering ferns are overgrowing the disturbed soils and remains of conifer forests. Credit: Mark Garlick.Climate change fuelled intense wildfires across Europe during the end-Triassic mass extinction event (ETME) 201 million years ago, burning fern savannahs, destroying forests, and radically altering the ecosystem.
Analysis of darkened ancient pollen and spores taken from across Europe suggest these prehistoric fires spanned thousands of miles, from Luxemburg to Greenland.
Explaining darkened spores
An international research team, led by Utrecht University, collected drill core samples from across the ETME area from Germany, Luxemburg, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Analysis revealed an extraordinary darkening of pollen and spores that is incompatible with simple thermal maturation.
To find out why, researchers carried out controlled combustion experiments on spores from the modern clubmoss plants. They found that the darkening was likely caused by fires with higher combustion temperatures resulting in darker spores.
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This explanation is supported by further analysis in which micro-charcoal and pyrolytic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were recovered from these rocks, providing evidence of frequent and widespread wildfire activity across Europe during the ETME.
Dr Bas van de Schootbrugge, from Utrecht University, said, “Ferns are truly remarkable plants that have withstood many crises throughout Earth history, and some species can adapt to some of the most extreme environments today.
Original Record.
This archived record authored by ‘Kerry Taylor-Smith’ at ‘METEORED (Your Weather)’ was recovered from data set:
English