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Type: Journal Article
Author(s): J. R. Dodson; Michael Robinson; Christophe Tardy
Publication Date: 2005

Yallalie is a probable meteor impact crater and in the Upper Pliocene contained a substantial lake. Two Mid-Pliocene finely laminated sediment records from Palaeolake Yallalie, from about 3 million years ago, provide evidence of fire and fire frequency in the sclerophyll woodland and heaths of south-western Australia in the absence of humans. Fine charcoal was observed in all samples examined, and was deposited at a rate of about 0.3-0.8 cm2 cm-2 year-1 in Palaeolake Yallalie. This evidence suggests the occurrence of annual fires occurring every year in the slightly warmer and wetter climate compared with today. The near coastal western location and the prevailing westerly winds probably carry charcoal from the near region or lake catchment scale. The data indicate that local fires occurred at a variety of time intervals between 3 and 13 years, with a typical average of 6-10 years. The results are comparable with those of Atahan et al. (2004) for the same site but from a period of about 200 000 years later in the Mid-Pliocene. Thus, the records which differ in age by some hundreds of thousands of years have all recorded fire frequencies that are longer than for the historical period and this may have important implications for the long-term survival of the integrity of the high biodiversity plant communities of the region.

Citation: Dodson, J. R., M. Robinson, and C. Tardy. 2005. Two fine-resolution Pliocene charcoal records and their bearing on pre-human fire frequency in south-western Australia. Austral Ecology, v. 30, no. 5, p. 592-599.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Regions:
Keywords:
  • Australia
  • charcoal
  • fire frequency
  • fire management
  • heathland
  • heathlands
  • paleoecology
  • plant communities
  • Pliocene fire regime
  • pre-human fire frequency
  • presettlement fires
  • rainforest
  • rainforests
  • sclerophyll forests
  • western Australia
  • western Australia
  • wildfires
Tall Timbers Record Number: 26783Location Status: Not in fileCall Number: Not in FileAbstract Status: Okay, Fair use, Reproduced by permission
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 50213

This bibliographic record was either created or modified by Tall Timbers and is provided without charge to promote research and education in Fire Ecology. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database is the intellectual property of Tall Timbers.