Journal article
The long-term impacts of climate and fire on catchment processes and aquatic ecosystem response in Tasmania, Australia
KK Beck, MS Fletcher, PS Gadd, H Heijnis, KM Saunders, A Zawadzki
Quaternary Science Reviews | PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD | Published : 2019
Abstract
The impacts of fire and climate on freshwater ecosystems are not well understood, masking the potential impacts of anthropogenic climate change on these systems. A 9200 year Holocene record of sedimentary Carbon/Nitrogen, x-ray fluorescence, charcoal, pollen, and diatoms preserved within a freshwater lake in Tasmania was used to understand the influences of climate variability and fire on aquatic ecosystem response. Western Tasmania is a cool temperate environment where fire occurrence is driven by hydroclimate. High rainfall during the early to mid-Holocene drove an increase in rainforest and peat in the absence of fire, resulting in an oligotrophic and turbid aquatic environment. This also..
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Awarded by National Parks and Wildlife Service
Funding Acknowledgements
The financial support for this project comes from the Australian Research Council (award: #DI110100019 and IN140100050) and Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (award: ALNGRA12003P). Kristen K. Beck would like to thank the Albert Shimmins Fund for financial assistance. We thank the Tasmania National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community for their support and allowing us to work on their lands. As well, thank you to Michela Mariani, Anthony Romano, Coralie Tate, and Valentina Vanghi for their assistance in the field. We would like to acknowledge Gavin L. Simpson for his assistance and support with the statistical analyses, Brent Wolfe and his laboratory at University of Waterloo, Canada (adjunct with Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada), and Mark Rollog from the University of Adelaide, Australia for their assistance with isotopic analysis and interpretation. We would like to thank the two reviewers for their feedback and support on this manuscript. All data presented in the tables, figures and Supplementary data will be made publicly available on Neotoma (https://www.neotomadb.org/) upon publication.