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Fire activity varies substantially at global scales because of the influence of climate, but at broad spatiotemporal scales, the possible effects of herbivory on fire activity are unknown. Here, we used late Quaternary large-bodied herbivore extinctions as a global exclusion experiment to examine the responses of grassy ecosystem paleofire activity (through charcoal proxies) to continental differences in extinction severity. Grassy ecosystem fire activity increased in response to herbivore extinction, with larger increases on continents that suffered the largest losses of grazers; browser declines had no such effect. These shifts suggest that herbivory can have Earth system–scale effects on fire and that herbivore impacts should be explicitly considered when predicting changes in past and future global fire activity. 

The global human footprint has fundamentally altered wildfire regimes, creating serious consequences for human health, biodiversity, and climate. However, it remains difficult to project how long-term interactions among land use, management, and climate change will affect fire behavior, representing a key knowledge gap for sustainable management. We used expert assessment to combine opinions about past and future fire regimes from 99 wildfire researchers. We asked for quantitative and qualitative assessments of the frequency, type, and implications of fire regime change from the beginning of the Holocene through the year 2300.

Respondents indicated some direct human influence on wildfire since at least ~ 12,000 years BP, though natural climate variability remained the dominant driver of fire regime change until around 5,000 years BP, for most study regions. Responses suggested a ten-fold increase in the frequency of fire regime change during the last 250 years compared with the rest of the Holocene, corresponding first with the intensification and extensification of land use and later with anthropogenic climate change. Looking to the future, fire regimes were predicted to intensify, with increases in frequency, severity, and size in all biomes except grassland ecosystems. Fire regimes showed different climate sensitivities across biomes, but the likelihood of fire regime change increased with higher warming scenarios for all biomes. Biodiversity, carbon storage, and other ecosystem services were predicted to decrease for most biomes under higher emission scenarios. We present recommendations for adaptation and mitigation under emerging fire regimes, while recognizing that management options are constrained under higher emission scenarios.

The influence of humans on wildfire regimes has increased over the last two centuries. The perspective gained from past fires should be considered in land and fire management strategies, but novel fire behavior is likely given the unprecedented human disruption of plant communities, climate, and other factors. Future fire regimes are likely to degrade key ecosystem services, unless climate change is aggressively mitigated. Expert assessment complements empirical data and modeling, providing a broader perspective of fire science to inform decision making and future research priorities.

 

An asteroid impact in the Yucatán Peninsula set off a sequence of events that led to the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) mass extinction of 76% species, including the nonavian dinosaurs. The impact hit a carbonate platform and released sulfate aerosols and dust into Earth’s upper atmosphere, which cooled and darkened the planet—a scenario known as an impact winter. Organic burn markers are observed in K–Pg boundary records globally, but their source is debated. If some were derived from sedimentary carbon, and not solely wildfires, it implies soot from the target rock also contributed to the impact winter. Characteristics of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the Chicxulub crater sediments and at two deep ocean sites indicate a fossil carbon source that experienced rapid heating, consistent with organic matter ejected during the formation of the crater. Furthermore, PAH size distributions proximal and distal to the crater indicate the ejected carbon was dispersed globally by atmospheric processes. Molecular and charcoal evidence indicates wildfires were also present but more delayed and protracted and likely played a less acute role in biotic extinctions than previously suggested. Based on stratigraphy near the crater, between 7.5 × 10¹⁴and 2.5 × 10¹⁵g of black carbon was released from the target and ejected into the atmosphere, where it circulated the globe within a few hours. This carbon, together with sulfate aerosols and dust, initiated an impact winter and global darkening that curtailed photosynthesis and is widely considered to have caused the K–Pg mass extinction.

 

That fire facilitated the late Miocene C₄grassland expansion is widely suspected but poorly documented. Fire potentially tied global climate to this profound biosphere transition by serving as a regional-to-local driver of vegetation change. In modern environments, seasonal extremes in moisture amplify the occurrence of fire, disturbing forest ecosystems to create niche space for flammable grasses, which in turn provide fuel for frequent fires. On the Indian subcontinent, C₄expansion was accompanied by increased seasonal extremes in rainfall (evidenced by δ¹⁸O_carbonate), which set the stage for fuel accumulation and fire-linked clearance during wet-to-dry seasonal transitions. Here, we test the role of fire directly by examining the abundance and distribution patterns of fire-derived polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and terrestrial vegetation signatures inn-alkane carbon isotopes from paleosol samples of the Siwalik Group (Pakistan). Two million years before the C₄grassland transition, fire-derived PAH concentrations increased as conifer vegetation declined, as indicated by a decrease in retene. This early increase in molecular fire signatures suggests a transition to more fire-prone vegetation such as a C₃grassland and/or dry deciduous woodland. Between 8.0 and 6.0 million years ago, fire, precipitation seasonality, and C₄-grass dominance increased simultaneously (within resolution) as marked by sharp increases in fire-derived PAHs, δ¹⁸O_carbonate, and¹³C enrichment inn-alkanes diagnostic of C₄grasses. The strong association of evidence for fire occurrence, vegetation change, and landscape opening indicates that a dynamic fire–grassland feedback system was both a necessary precondition and a driver for grassland ecology during the first emergence of C₄grasslands.

 

Fire dynamics potentially account for the asynchronous timing of the expansion of C₄grasslands throughout the Mio‐Pliocene world. Yet how fire, climate, and ecosystems interacted in different settings remain poorly constrained because it is difficult to quantify fires and fuel source over these timescales. Here, we apply molecular proxies for fire occurrence alongside records of vegetation change and paleohydrology in Bengal Fan sediments (ODP Leg 116) to examine fire feedbacks on the south Asian continent. We employ abundances of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to reconstruct fire occurrence and δ¹³C measurements of pyrogenic PAHs to constrain fuel source and grassland burning. This combination allowed us to test whether: (1) a fire‐seasonality forcing facilitated the expansion of grassland ecosystems and (2) a fire‐C₄grass burning feedback maintained these systems. PAHs can be sourced from weathered fossil carbon (i.e., a petrogenic source) and from burned terrestrial biomass (i.e., a pyrogenic source). Alkylated and non‐alkylated structure abundance data distinguished pyrogenic from petrogenic sourced samples. A sharp increase in pyrogenic PAHs along with increases in δ²H and δ¹³C values of plant waxes at 7.4 Ma indicates increased fire coincided with the onset of C₄expansion and hydrologic change in South Asia. The correlated¹³C enrichment in PAHs,¹³C enrichment in plant waxes, and increased abundances of PAHs suggest burning of C₄grasslands likely maintained open ecosystems. Our results link fire to the initial opening of grassland ecosystems on a subcontinental‐scale and support disturbance as a critical mechanism of terrestrial biome transition.

 

Herbivory is a key process structuring vegetation in savannas, especially in Africa where large mammal herbivore communities remain intact. Exclusion experiments consistently show that herbivores impact savanna vegetation, but effect size variation has resisted explanation, limiting our understanding of the past, present and future roles of herbivory in savanna ecosystems.

Synthesis of vegetation responses to herbivore exclusion shows that herbivory decreased grass abundance by 57.0% and tree abundance by 30.6% across African savannas.

The magnitude of herbivore exclusion effects scaled with herbivore abundance: more grazing herbivores resulted in larger grass responses and more browsing herbivores in larger tree responses. However, existing experiments are concentrated in semi‐arid savannas (400–800‐mm rainfall) and soils data are mostly lacking, which makes disentangling environmental constraints a challenge and priority for future research.

Observed herbivore impacts were ~2.1× larger than existing estimates modelled based on consumption. Wildlife metabolic rates may be higher than are usually used for estimating consumption, which offers one clear avenue for reconciling estimated herbivore consumption with observed herbivore impacts. Plant‐soil feedbacks, plant community composition, and the phenological or demographic timing of herbivory may also influence vegetation productivity, thereby magnifying herbivore impacts.

Because herbivore abundance so closely predicts vegetation impact, changes in herbivore abundance through time are likely predictive of the past and future of their impacts. Grazer diversity in Africa has declined from its peak 1 million years ago and wild grazer abundance has declined historically, suggesting that grazing likely had larger impacts in the past than it does today.

Current wildlife impacts are dominated by small‐bodied mixed feeders, which will likely continue into the future, but the magnitude of top‐down control may also depend on changing climate, fire and atmospheric CO₂.

Synthesis. Herbivore biomass determines the magnitude of their impacts on savanna vegetation, with effect sizes based on direct observation that outstrip existing modelled estimates across African savannas. Findings suggest substantial ecosystem impacts of herbivory and allow us to generate evidence‐based hypotheses of the past and future impacts of herbivores on savanna vegetation.

 

C₄grasslands proliferated later in Australia than they did on other continents (∼3.5 Ma vs. 10–5 Ma). It remains unclear whether this delay reflects differences in climate conditions or ecological feedbacks, such as fire, that promote C₄ecosystems. Here, we evaluated these factors using terrestrial biomarkers from marine sediments off western Australia. Fire‐derived polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) indicate fire ecology did not substantially change during or following C₄expansion. The presence of fire‐adapted C₃woody vegetation likely diminished the role of fire and delayed C₄expansion until it was prompted by climate drying between 3.5 and 3.0 Ma. At the same time, mass accumulation rates of weathered PAHs increased 100‐fold, which indicates a significant loss of soil carbon accompanied this ecosystem shift. The tight couplings between hydroclimate and carbon storage altered boundary conditions for Australian ecosystems, and similar abrupt behavior may shape environmental responses to climate change.

 

Modern tropical and subtropical C₄grasslands and savannas were established during the late‐Miocene and Pliocene, over 20 Myr after evolutionary originations of the C₄photosynthetic pathway. This lag suggests environmental factors first limited and then favored C₄plants. Here, we examine the timing and drivers for the establishment of C₄grasslands on the Indian Subcontinent using carbon and hydrogen isotope signatures of plant‐waxn‐alkanes recovered from turbidites in the Bengal Fan. Like prior studies, we find C₄ecosystems in the Ganges‐Brahmaputra catchment first emerged at 7.4 Ma and subsequently expanded between 6.9 to ∼6.0 Ma. Hydrogen isotope values varied from 10.2 to 7.4 Ma and then increased after 7.4, which suggests intermittent drying began before the establishment of C₄grasslands with further drying at the onset of C₄expansion. Synthesis of published plant fossil data from the Siwalik Group of the Himalayan foreland basin documents an ecosystem trajectory from evergreen tropical forests to seasonally deciduous forests, and then expansive C₄grasslands. This trajectory coincided with a seasonally uneven drying trend due to both increased evaporation of plant leaf and soil waters and reduced rainfall, as identified in soil carbonate and tooth enamel data sets. Collectively the fossil, biomarker, and isotopic evidence reveal the development of modern C₄ecosystems on the Indian Subcontinent followed a series of ecosystem transformations driven by drying and fire feedbacks, and possibly declining atmospheric pCO₂, beginning at 10.2 Ma and strengthening through the late Miocene.