Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T04:11:50.009Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

59 - Historical 14C evidence of fire in tropical montane cloud forests in the Chimalapas region of Oaxaca, southern Mexico

from Part VI - Effects of climate variability and climate change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

Y. Wård
Affiliation:
Swedish University, Sweden
A. Malmer
Affiliation:
Swedish University, Sweden
H. Asbjornsen
Affiliation:
Iowa State University, USA
L. A. Bruijnzeel
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
F. N. Scatena
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
L. S. Hamilton
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

ABSTRACT

Tropical montane cloud forests (TMCF) in the Chimalapas region of Oaxaca, Southern Mexico were subjected to large-scale fires during the El Niño events of 1997/98. This raised the question as to whether fire occurrence in this type of forest is cyclic. Charcoal fragments were collected for 14C dating throughout mineral soil profiles down to 50 cm depth at two sites with contrasting geology. Three distinct clusters of fires were found, the first dating from 2350–1900 yr BP, the second from 960–670 yr BP, and the third from 670–470 yr BP. These new data suggest that there have been fires in these TMCF in the past, but at very long time intervals. The identified clusters of enhanced fire activity in the Chimalapas correlate with other paleo-climatic data from Central America and the Caribbean, suggesting periods when the climate was distinctly drier throughout the region. The clustering of fire occurrence at certain times indicates an enhanced risk of repeated fires in secondary TMCF, as has been found for other humid tropical forests.

INTRODUCTION

Sanford et al. (1985) suggested that the fire ecology of tropical rain forests should be considered in both historic and present-day contexts. During the last decades a number of severe large-scale fires have occurred throughout the humid tropical forest domain – usually related to changes in vegetation (fuel and moisture preservation) – and these fires have rendered also shorter droughts critical (Goldammer, 2007). Major El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events accompanied by extreme droughts, e.g. in 1982/83 in South-East Asia (Leighton and Wirawan, 1986) and in 1997/98 also in Amazonia and Central America (Malhi and Wright, 2005), have exercerbated fire activity.

Type
Chapter
Information
Tropical Montane Cloud Forests
Science for Conservation and Management
, pp. 575 - 578
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anta, S. F., and Plancarte, A. B. (2001). The forest fires: Chimalapas – the last opportunity. In The Castor Workshop, p. 249. Mexico City: World Wildlife Fund and the Mexican Secretariat of the Environment.Google Scholar
Asbjornsen, H., and Wickel, A. J. (2009). Changing fire regimes in tropical montane cloud forests: a global synthesis. In Fire and Tropical Ecosystems, ed. Cochrane, M. A., pp. 607–622. New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Asbjornsen, H., Gallardo-Hernández, C., Velázques-Rosas, N., and García-Soriano, R. (2005). Deep ground fires cause massive above- and below-ground biomass losses in tropical montane cloud forests, Oaxaca, Mexico. Journal of Tropical Ecology 21: 427–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, B. C., Kundzewicz, Z. W., Wu, S., and Palutikof, J. P. (eds.) (2008). Climate Change and Water. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC Secretariat.Google Scholar
Bergthórsson, P. (1969). An estimate of drift ice and temperature in Iceland in 1000 years. Jökull 19: 94–101.Google Scholar
Bronk Ramsey, C. (1995). Radiocarbon calibration and the analysis of stratigraphy. Radiocarbon 37: 425–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronk Ramsey, C. (2001). Development of the radiocarbon calibration program. Radiocarbon 43: 355–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bush, M. B., Silman, M. R., and Urrego, D. H. (2004). 48,000 years of climate and forest change in a biodiversity hotspot. Science 303: 827–829.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cayuela, L., Benayas, J. M. R., and Echevarría, C. (2006). Clearance and fragmentation of tropical montane forests in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico (1975–2000). Forest Ecology and Management 226: 208–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtis, J. H., and Hodell, D. A. (1993). An isotopic and trace element study of Ostracods from Lake Miragoane, Haiti: a 10,500 year record of paleosalinity and paleotemperature changes in the Caribbean. In Climate Change in Continental Isotopic Records, ed. Swart, P. K., pp. 135–152. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union.Google Scholar
,FAO (2001). Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000, Main Report, FAO Forestry Paper No. 140. Rome: FAO.
Goldammer, J. G. (2007). History of equatorial vegetation fires and fire research in Southeast Asia before the 1997–98 episode: a reconstruction of creeping environmental changes. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 12: 13–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haug, G. H., Hughen, K. A., Sigman, D. M., Peterson, L. C., and Rohl, U. (2001). Southward migration of the intertropical convergence zone through the Holocene. Science 293: 1304–1308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haug, G. H., Gunther, D., Peterson, L. C., et al. (2003). Climate and the collapse of Maya civilization. Science 299: 1731–1735.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hemp, A. (2005). Climate change driven forest fires marginalize the impact of ice cap wasting on Kilimanjaro. Global Change Biology 11: 1013–1023.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodell, D. A., Curtis, J. H., and Brenner, M. (1995). Possible role of climate in the collapse of classic Maya civilization. Nature 375: 391–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horn, S. P., Orvis, K. H., Kennedy, L. M., and Clark, G. M. (2000). Prehistoric fires in the highlands of the Dominican Republic: evidence from charcoal in soils and and sediments. Caribbean Journal of Science 36: 10–18.Google Scholar
Karmalkar, A. V., Bradley, R. S., and Diaz, H. F. (2008). Climate change scenario for Costa Rican montane forests. Geophysical Research Letters 25, L11702, doi:10.1029/2008GL033940.Google Scholar
Leighton, M., and Wirawan, N. (1986). Catastrophic drought and fire in Borneo tropical rain forest associated with the 1982–1983 El Nino Southern Oscillation Event. In Tropical Forests and the World Atmosphere, ed. Prance, G. T., pp. 75–102. Washington DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science.Google Scholar
Lorence, D. H., and Mendoza, A. G. (1989). Oaxaca, Mexico. In Floristic Inventory of Tropical Countries, eds. Campell, D. G. and Hammond, D. H., pp. 253–309. New York: New York Botanical Gardens.Google Scholar
Malhi, Y., and Wright, J. (2005). Late twentieth-century patterns and trends in the climate of tropical forest regions. In Tropical Forests and Global Atmospheric Change, eds. Malhi, Y. and Phillips, O., pp. 3–16. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malmer, A. (2004). Streamwater quality as affected by wild fires in natural and man-made vegetation in Malaysian Borneo. Hydrological Processes 18: 853–864.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malmer, A., Noorwijk, M., and Bruijnzeel, L. A. (2005). Effects of shifting cultivation and forest fire. In Forests, Water and People in the Humid Tropics, eds. Bonell, M. and Bruijnzeel, L. A., pp. 533–560. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, P. H., and Fahey, T. J. (2006). Fire history along environmental gradients in the subtropical pine forests of the Cordillera Central, Dominican Republic. Journal of Tropical Ecology 22: 289–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosandl, R., Günter, S., Stimm, B., and Weber, M. (2008). Ecuador suffers the highest deforestation rate in South America. In Gradients in a Tropical Mountain Ecosystem of Ecuador, eds. Beck, E., Bendix, J., Kottke, I., Makeschin, F., and Mosandl, R., pp. 37–40. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mourguiart, P., and Ledru, M. P. (2003). Last glacial maximum in an Andean cloud forest environment (eastern Cordillera, Bolivia). Geology 31: 195–198.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moy, C. M., Seltzer, G. O., Rodbell, D. T., and Anderson, D. M. (2002). Variability of El Nino/Southern Oscillation activity at millennial timescales during the Holocene epoch. Nature 420: 162–165.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ponette-González, A. G., Weathers, K. C., and Curran, L. M. (2009). Water inputs across a tropical montane landscape in Veracruz, Mexico: synergistic effects of land cover, rain and fog seasonality, and interannual precipitation variability. Global Change Biology, doi:10.1111/j.1365–2486.2009.01985.x.Google Scholar
Roman-Cuesta, R. M., Garcia, M., and Retana, J. (2003). Environmental and human factors influencing fire trends in ENSO and non-ENSO years in tropical Mexico. Ecological Applications 13: 1177–1192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanford, R. L. J., Saldarriaga, J., Clark, K. E., Uhl, C., and Herrera, R. (1985). Amazon rain-forest fires. Science 227: 53–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schrumpf, M., Guggenberger, G., Valarezo, C., and Zech, W. (2001). Tropical montane rain forest soils: development and nutrient status along an altitudinal gradient in the south Ecuadorian Andes. Die Erde 132: 43–59.Google Scholar
Sugden, D. E., and John, B. S. (1976). Glaciers and Landscape. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Wård, Y. (2003). Soil Descriptions in Burned and Unburned Cloud Forest and Indications of Fire History in the Chimalapas, Oaxaca State, Mexico. Umeå, Sweden: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×