Joint meeting of the Canadian and American Quaternary Associations
​Crossing borders in the Quaternary

S9) Changes in the wildfire regime and impact on ecosystem structure and functions

Co-Chairs: Olivier Blarquez  (Université de Montréal); Nicolas Pelletier (Carleton University)

In recent years, North American climatic conditions have become increasingly conducive to wildfires, leading to record fire seasons affecting both fire prone ecosystems such as Californian chapparals and ecosystems rarely subjected to fires such as tundras. Wildfires can drastically modify terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and climate change predictions suggest a further increase in the frequency and extent of those impacts. This session will cover the evolution of the North American fire regime during the Holocene and the impact of the changes in fire regime on ecosystem structure and function.

Among subjects of interest are new methods for the statistical interpretation of charcoal particles in sediments, effects of wildfires on lakes and river biogeochemical cycling, effects on the freshwater transport of contaminants and the use of paleolimnological data to infer terrestrial processes such as changing vegetation patterns, permafrost cover or northern treeline movement. Talks and poster linking paleolimnological data to monitoring or remote sensing data are also of high interest.