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Integrating charcoal morphology and stable carbon isotope analysis to identify non-grass elongate charcoal in tropical savannas

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Abstract

Fire is inextricably linked to the vegetation that provides the fuel load. For palaeofire records to contribute meaningfully to the reconstruction of past landscape fire history, it is helpful to identify the vegetation that has been burnt, for example, grassy versus woody vegetation in tropical savannas. The morphological characteristics of charcoal particles can provide useful information on source vegetation type, and the aspect ratio of charcoal particles has been proposed to identify the contribution of grasses to environmental records. Stable carbon isotope analysis of pyrogenic carbon can also chemically identify the proportion of C3 and C4 biomass in charcoal samples but has yet to be widely applied alongside charcoal morphological analysis. Using carbon isotope analysis we demonstrate that C3 sedges contribute elongate charcoal to a fire record where C4 grasses are absent. These results challenge the widespread assumption that elongate charcoal is primarily or exclusively derived from grass, as most experimental studies demonstrating this relationship were conducted in environments where graminoids (grass-like forms) did not significantly contribute to available fuels. In turn, this complicates the simple interpretation of elongate aspect ratios for charcoal in fire records as direct proxies for the proportion of grasses in an environment, beyond differentiating temperate forests from grasslands. Minimal work to date has been done on separating charcoal derived from different graminoid types and future studies would benefit from the ability to differentiate graminoids including Poaceae and Cyperaceae in fire records. These results highlight the benefits of a multi-proxy approach to the interpretation of fire records in tropical savannas.

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Acknowledgements

This project was undertaken with the support of an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship to MIB (FL140100044) and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CE170100015). ER acknowledges financial support from the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (Postgraduate Research Award 12143). The authors thank Charles Woosop for allowing site access to Sanamere lagoon. The authors thank Michael Brand, Rainy Comley, Jordahna Haig, Maria Rivera Araya, Jennifer Whan, Chris Wurster and Costjin Zwart for assistance during fieldwork and laboratory analyses at James Cook University, and Jay Chellappa, Patricia Gadd and Sabika Maizma for laboratory assistance at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Thanks to Chris Turney for feedback during drafting of the manuscript, and to the reviewers for their time and valuable feedback on the completed manuscript. This research was conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (project number CE170100015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, QLD, 4870, Australia

    Emma Rehn, Cassandra Rowe & Michael I. Bird

  2. ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, QLD, 4870, Australia

    Emma Rehn, Cassandra Rowe, Sean Ulm & Michael I. Bird

  3. College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, QLD, 4870, Australia

    Sean Ulm

  4. Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, New Illawarra Road, Lucas Heights, NSW, 2234, Australia

    Craig Woodward, Atun Zawadzki & Geraldine Jacobsen

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Rehn, E., Rowe, C., Ulm, S. et al. Integrating charcoal morphology and stable carbon isotope analysis to identify non-grass elongate charcoal in tropical savannas. Veget Hist Archaeobot 31, 37–48 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-021-00836-z

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