Surprising findings on forest fires
Thursday, February 21, 2019 - 10:00
in Earth & Climate
Lake Van in eastern Turkey is considered a unique climate archive. Several years ago, an international team of scientists led by the University of Bonn raised sediments from the bottom of the lake reflecting the past 600,000 years. An interdisciplinary group of soil scientists and paleobotanists from the University of Bonn has now evaluated the drill cores for residues of early fires—with surprising findings. The fires did not mainly occur during particularly dry periods as assumed, but in comparatively humid and warm periods—because then the forests grew particularly lush and provided fuel for fires. The results are now published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.