Forest Research Center - MNFRC001 Hessl, Amy, E.; Ariya, Uyanga; Brown, Peter; Byambasuren, Oyunsannaa; Green, Tim; Jacoby, Gordon; Sutherland, Elaine, Kennedy; Nachin, Baatarbileg; Maxwell; R., Stockton; Pederson, Neil; De Grandpre, Louis; Saladyga, Thomas; Tardif, Jacques, C.; Oyunbilig, E.; Ser-Od, B.; Biligbaatar, N. Dating method: crossdated Sample storage location: West Virginia University Department of Geology and Geography, 98 Beechurst Ave, Morgantown, WV 26506 Reference: Hessly, A.E.; Ariya, U.; Brown, P.; Byambasuren,O.; Green, T.; Jacoby,G.; Sutherland, E.K.; Nachin, B.; Maxwell, R.S.; Pederson, N.; De Grandpre, L.; Saladyga, T.; Tardif, J.C. 2012. Reconstructing fire history in central Mongolia from tree-rings. Internation Journal of Wildland Fire. 21:86-92. Abstract: Rising temperatures are expected to increase wildfire activity in many regions of the world. Over the last 60 years in Mongolia, mean annual temperatures have increased ~2C and the recorded frequency and spatial extent of forest and steppe fires have increased. Few long records of fire history exist to place these recent changes in a historical perspective. The purpose of this paper is to report on fire history research from three sites in central Mongolia and to highlight the potential of this region as a test case for understanding the relationship between climate change, fire and lang use. We collected partial cross-sections from fire-scarred trees and stumps at each site using a targeted sampling approach. All three sites had long histories of fire rangeing from 280 to 450 years. Mean Weibull fire return intervals varied from 7 to 16 years. Fire scars at one protected-area site were nearly absent after 1760, likely owing to changes in land use. There is limited synchrony in fire occurrence across sites, suggesting that fire occurrence, at least at annual time scales, might be influenced by local processes (grazing, human ignitions, other land-use factors) as well as regional processes like climate. Additional data are being collected to further test hypotheses regarding climate change, land use and fire. Reference: Hessl, A.E.; Brown, P.; Byambasuren,O.; Cockrell, S.; Leland, C.; Cook, E.; Nachin, B.; Pederson, N.; Saladyga, T.; Suran, B. 2016. Fire and climate in Mongolia (1532-2010 Common Era). Geophysical Research Letters. 43:6519-6527. DOI 10.1002/2016gl069059. Abstract: Recent increases in wildland fire, warming temperatures, and land use change have coincided in many forested regions, making it difficult to parse causes of elevated fire activity. Here we use 20 multicentury fire scar chronologies (464 fire scar samples) from Mongolia to evaluate the role of climate forcing of fire in the context of livestock grazing and minimal fire suppression. We observe no change in fire return intervals post-1900; however, since the 1500s, periods of drought are coincident with more fire and shorter fire return intervals. We observe same year and some antecedent year effects of dought on fire, a pattern typical of semiarid forests elsewhere. During the instrumental period, drought remains an important drive of fire however, limited fire activity in recent decades may be due to the coincidence of drought and intensive grazing that have synergized to reduce fuel continuity and fire spread. NOAA/IMPD web landing page for this fire history site is available at: https://ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/22491 NOAA/IMPD DIF and JSON metadata records for this fire history site are available at: https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/published/paleo/dif/xml/noaa-fire-22491.xml and https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/published/paleo/json/noaa-fire-22491.json FHX filename: https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/asia/mnfrc001.fhx IMPD code: MNFRC001 Name of site: Forest Research Center Site code: FRC Contributors: Hessl, Amy, E.; Ariya, Uyanga; Brown, Peter; Byambasuren, Oyunsannaa; Green, Tim; Jacoby, Gordon; Sutherland, Elaine, Kennedy; Nachin, Baatarbileg; Maxwell; R., Stockton; Pederson, Neil; De Grandpre, Louis; Saladyga, Thomas; Tardif, Jacques, C.; Oyunbilig, E.; Ser-Od, B.; Biligbaatar, N. Latitude: 48.26 (WGS84) Longitude: 106.88 (WGS84) Mean elevation: 1425 (meters) Country: Mongolia State: Tuv First year: 1564 AD Last year: 2009 AD Species name: Larix sibirica [LASI] Funding agency names and grant numbers: Nation Science Foundation [DEB 0815021], American Center for Mongolian Studies Comments: Hessl fire data from Forest Research Center - IMPD MNFRC001 Fire History Graphs: Fire History Graphs illustrate specific years when fires occurred and how many trees were scarred. They are available in both PDF and PNG formats. The graphs consist of 2 parts, both of which show the X axis (time line) at the bottom with the earliest year of information on the left and the latest on the right. The Fire Index Plot is the topmost plot, and shows two variables: sample depth (the number of recording trees in each year) as a blue line along the left Y axis, compared with the percent trees scarred shown as gray bars along the right Y axis. Below, the Fire Chronology Plot consists of horizontal lines representing injuries by year on individual sampled trees. Symbols are overlain that denote the years containing the dendrochronologically-dated fire scars or injuries. The sample ID of each tree is displayed to the right of each line. The Composite Axis below represents the composite information from all individual series. The symbols used to represent the fire scars or injuries, and the filters used to determine the composite information, are shown in the legend. These graphs were created using the Fire History Analysis and Exploration System (FHAES). See http://www.fhaes.org for more information.