Narstai Mountains - MNNRS001
Hessl, Amy, E.; Brown, Peter; Byambasuren, Oyunsanaa; Cockrell, Shawn; Leland, Caroline; Cook, Ed; Nachin, Baatarbileg; Pederson, Neil; Saladyga, Thomas; Suran, Byambagerel; James, Joseph; Byambasuren, Bat-erdene, Soronzonbold, Bayarbaatar; Munkhbat, Galbadrakh

Dating method: crossdated

Sample storage location: Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research, 2901 Moore Lane, Fort Collins, CO 80526

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/22500

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-22500.xml and https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/published/paleo/json/noaa-fire-22500.json

FHX filename: https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/asia/mnnrs001.fhx

IMPD code: MNNRS001

Name of site: Narstai Mountains

Site code: NRS

Contributors: Hessl, Amy, E.; Brown, Peter; Byambasuren, Oyunsanaa; Cockrell, Shawn; Leland, Caroline; Cook, Ed; Nachin, Baatarbileg; Pederson, Neil; Saladyga, Thomas; Suran, Byambagerel; James, Joseph; Byambasuren, Bat-erdene, Soronzonbold, Bayarbaatar; Munkhbat, Galbadrakh

Latitude: 48.37 (WGS84)

Longitude: 110 (WGS84)

Mean elevation: 1389 (meters)

Country: Mongolia

State: Khentii

First year: 1743 AD

Last year: 2010 AD

Species name: Pinus sylvestris [PISY]

Funding agency names and grant numbers: 
National Science Foundation [DEB-0816700], National Geographic Society [8791-10], Eastern Kentucky University

Comments:
Hessl fire data from Narstai Mountains - IMPD MNNRS001

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.