Tuul River - MNTUL001 Saladyga, Thomas; Hessl, Amy, E.; Nachin, Baatarbileg; Pederson, Neil; Leland, Caroline; Suran, Byambagerel; Ariya, Uyanga; Bayrbaatar, Soronzonbold; Flynn, Elizabeth Dating method: crossdated Sample storage location: West Virginia University Department of Geology and Geography, 98 Beechurst Ave, Morgantown, WV 26506 Reference: Saladyga, T; Hessl, A; Nachin, Baatarbileg; Pederson, N 2013. Privatization, Drought, and Fire Exclusion in the Tuul River Watershed, Mongolia. Ecosystems. 16:6:1139-1151. Abstract: Global wildfire frequency and extent are expected to increase under projected climate change in the twenty-first century, yet little is known about how human activities might affect this trend. In central Mongolia, there has been a 2.5C rise in spring and summer temperatures during the last 40 years and a decrease in moisture availability during the latter half of the twentieth century. Concurrently, Mongolia has experienced multiple shifts in socio-economic systems during the twentieth century, most notably the establishment of a Soviet-backed communist economy in the 1920s and a rapid transition to privatization in the 1990s. Observed records of fire in the late twentieth century suggested that fire activity had increased, but no long-term data existed to place these trends in a historical context. Our objective was to identify spatial and temporal patterns in fire occurrence in the forest-steppe ecotone of the Tuul River watershed in the context of changing climatic and social conditions since 1875. We used fire-scarred trees to reconstruct past fire occurrence during the period 1875-2009. Our results indicate a significant association between human activity and fire occurrencfe indpendent of climatic variables. The greatest evidence for an anthropogenic fire regime exists following the transition to a free market economy during the early 1990s when land-use intensification near the capital city of Ulaanbaatar resulted in fire exclusion. We emphasize the importance of including socio-political variables in global models of wildfire potential, particularly where fuels limit fire activity. 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/22494 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-22494.xml and https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/published/paleo/json/noaa-fire-22494.json FHX filename: https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/asia/mntul001.fhx IMPD code: MNTUL001 Name of site: Tuul River Site code: TUL Contributors: Saladyga, Thomas; Hessl, Amy, E.; Nachin, Baatarbileg; Pederson, Neil; Leland, Caroline; Suran, Byambagerel; Ariya, Uyanga; Bayrbaatar, Soronzonbold; Flynn, Elizabeth Latitude: 48.09 (WGS84) Longitude: 107.68 (WGS84) Mean elevation: 1618 (meters) Country: Mongolia State: Tuv First year: 1487 AD Last year: 2009 AD Species name: [LASI, PISY] Funding agency names and grant numbers: National Science Foundation [0816700], Explorers Club Washington Group Comments: Saladyga fire data from Tull River - IMPD MNTUL001 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.