Marginal imprint of human land use upon fire history in a mire-dominated boreal landscape of the Veps Highland, North-West Russia

Spatially explicit reconstructions of fire activity in European boreal forests are rare, limiting our understanding of factors driving vegetation dynamics in this part of the boreal domain. We have developed a spatially explicit dendrochronological reconstruction of a fire regime in a mire-dominated landscape of the Veps Nature Park (North-West Russia) over the 1580-2000 CE period.

We dated 74 fire years using 164 fire-scarred living and dead Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) trees collected on 31 sites. The historical fire cycle was 91.4 years (90% confidence intervals, CI 66.2–137.6 years) over the 1580–1720 period, decreasing to 35.9 (CI 28.1–47.6 years) between 1730 and 1770, and then increasing again to 122.7 years (CI 91.0–178.0 years) over the 1780–2000 period. The reconstructed forest fire history featured a number of patterns clearly deviating from the trends documented in previous Northern European reconstructions. The most striking feature was the absence of a period with increased fire activity during the 1600s, a pattern widely observed in Fennoscandia and in Russian Karelia. We noted, however, a higher fire activity period between 1730 and 1780, resulting from the increase in early season fires.

Land-use history of the area did not appear to have an effect on historical fire dynamics. The current FC in the Veps Highland is close to the estimates reported for the pre-industrial colonisation period in Fennoscandia, which suggests that the area's forests currently maintain their close-to-natural fire regime.