Wildfires affect 40% of the earth's terrestrial biome, but much of our knowledge of wildfire activity is limited to the satellite era. Improved understanding of past fires is necessary to better forecast how fire regimes might change with future climate change, to understand ecosystem resilience to fire, and to improve data-model comparisons. Environmental proxy archives can extend our knowledge of past fire activity. Speleothems, naturally occurring cave formations, are widely used in paleoenvironmental research as they are absolutely dateable, occur on every ice-free continent, and include multiple proxies. Recently, speleothems have been shown to record past fire events (Argiriadis et al., 2019, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.9b00767; McDonough et al., 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2022.03.020; Homann et al., 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34950-x). Here we present a review of this emerging application in speleothem paleoenvironmental science. We give a concise overview of fire regimes and common paleofire proxies, describe past attempts to use stalagmites to investigate paleofire, and describe the physical basis through which speleothems can record past fires. We then describe the ideal speleothem sample for paleofire research and offer a summary of applicable laboratory and statistical methods. Finally, we present four case studies from southwest Australia which: (a) explore the geochemistry of ash leachates, (b) detail how sulfate isotopes may be a proxy for post fire ecological recovery, (c) demonstrate how a catastrophic paleofire was linked to changes in climate and land management, and (d) investigate whether deep caves can record past fire events. We conclude the paper by outlining future research directions for paleofire applications.

中文翻译：

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以澳大利亚案例研究作为 Paleofire 代理档案的 Speleothems 的回顾

野火影响了地球 40% 的陆地生物群落，但我们对野火活动的大部分了解仅限于卫星时代。有必要更好地了解过去的火灾，以便更好地预测火灾状况如何随未来气候变化而变化，了解生态系统对火灾的恢复能力，以及改进数据模型比较。环境代理档案可以扩展我们对过去火灾活动的了解。Speleothems 是自然形成的洞穴，广泛用于古环境研究，因为它们绝对可以过时，出现在每个无冰大陆上，并且包括多个代理。最近，洞穴已被证明可以记录过去的火灾事件（Argiriadis 等人，2019 年，https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.9b00767；McDonough 等人，2022 年，https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.gca.2022.03.020；Homann 等人，2022 年，https://doi。组织/10.1038/s41467-022-34950-x）。在这里，我们对这一在洞穴古环境科学中的新兴应用进行了回顾。我们简要概述了火灾制度和常见的古火代理，描述了过去使用石笋调查古火的尝试，并描述了洞穴可以记录过去火灾的物理基础。然后，我们描述了用于古火研究的理想洞穴样本，并提供了适用的实验室和统计方法的摘要。最后，我们介绍了来自澳大利亚西南部的四个案例研究：(a) 探索灰渗滤液的地球化学，(b) 详细说明硫酸盐同位素如何成为火灾后生态恢复的代表，(c) 证明灾难性的古火如何与气候和土地管理的变化，以及 (d) 调查深洞穴是否可以记录过去的火灾事件。