Paleo-Perspectives on Fire in the Earth System

Dear Colleagues,

The earliest evidence of fire on Earth is charcoal preserved in the Silurian Period over 400 million years ago. This phenomenon has evolved alongside the Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere, with these three components having equally important influences on one another. More recently, humankind gained control of fire, perturbing longstanding environmental equilibriums. In this way, fire is increasingly recognized as an important component of the Earth system with deep roots in geologic history.

Recently, extreme and damaging fire events have sparked great interest in the drivers and controls of fire. Historical records are short relative to the long time scales on which climatic and ecological drivers of fire operate. Paleofire records thus offer context with which we can assess the magnitude of observed burning, infer fire-climate and fire-vegetation relationships, and predict the impact of anthropogenic climate change on fire regimes. Additionally, the paleo-record provides a perspective of fire history both before and as humans became the dominant influence on global fire activity, allowing us to establish baselines.

An array of proxies, methodologies, statistical analyses, and earth system archives facilitate the paleofire approach, making it a dynamic, exciting, and uniquely interdisciplinary field of study. In this Special Issue, we seek articles aiming to understand the history, controls, evolution, and impacts of fire on Earth, across all temporal and spatial scales. We also welcome fire proxy developments, calibrations, and comparisons. This Special Issue is undertaken in tandem with a session to be held at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting 2019 (PP039 – “We Didn’t Start the Fire: Paleo-perspectives on Fire in the Earth System”). Though this Special Issue was inspired by this conference session, contributions are not limited by it and we welcome other similar research.

Dr. Grant Harley
Ms. Allison Karp
Ms. Jarunetr Nadia Sae-Lim
Mr. Richard Vachula
Mr. Troy Ferland
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• paleofire
• fire proxies
• paleoclimate
• paleoecology
• organic geochemistry
• isotope geochemistry
• dendrochronology
• climate change
• human–fire interactions