The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Eastern Siberia is often described as the coldest permanently inhabited region on Earth. Despite this, it has been experiencing an increasing number of extreme wildfires in recent years, which are not only changing the ecosystem but are also endangering the people who live here. However, it is difficult to say how the fires start and what effects they have, as there has been little long-term data available for this region. Researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute have now reconstructed the regional fire dynamics in Yakutia over the last 10,000 years for the first time and discovered that not only climate fluctuations play a role. Humans have also had an increasing influence on regional fire activity – possibly much earlier than previously assumed. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
In the early Holocene, around 10,000 years ago, there was increased activity of wildfires in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in eastern Russia before dropping to a lower level around 6000 years ago. “Independent simulations show that the extent of the simulated fires, which could occur naturally driven by climate factors such as temperature or precipitation, largely coincides with the reconstructed fire activity, especially in the early Holocene,“ says Dr Ramesh Glückler, first author of the study from the Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems Group at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). “Since the last 5,000 years, however, there have been more and more fire dynamics that can no longer be explained by the climate alone.” In their study, the researchers argue that human activities may have influenced fire dynamics in Yakutia earlier than previously assumed.
Together with the North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk, the AWI researchers retrieved sediment cores from lakes in Eastern Siberia in 2021. These contain charcoal particles deposited over long periods of time, which they used to reconstruct the region's long-term fire activity for the first time. “By analysing the sediment cores, we built up several new data sets, which we then expanded to include existing data,” says Prof. Ulrike Herzschuh, another author of the study. “We then compared our regional reconstruction with simulations of vegetation fires in a climate-driven forest model.”
The comparison shows that climate-related factors can explain the general, long-term trend in wildfire activity in the Holocene, but not shorter-term fluctuations over the last 5,000 years. As the researchers suspected that human activities could be the cause of this, they limited the fuel availability in the forest model as a result of, for example, colonisation or land use. This adjustment actually enabled a significantly improved match between simulation and reconstruction. “We see this as an indication that a human perspective is necessary to fully understand fire activity during the Holocene in Yakutia,” explains Ramesh Glückler. The coniferous forests in the region are considered to be an ecosystem that was significantly influenced by humans at a relatively late point in time. “Our study now shows that humans may have influenced it much earlier than previously thought – and thus may even have been able to protect themselves from extreme vegetation fires.”
The look into the past provides important clues as to how earlier settlers could have indirectly protected themselves and their territories from wildfires by reducing the amount of fuel – perhaps also from the kind of fires we can observe in the region today. “Very explicitly, our findings suggest that cultural, controlled fires in Yakutia also enabled a possible protective effect against extreme vegetation fires, while these traditional fire-based practices of the indigenous population are prohibited in today's Russia,” summarises Ramesh Glückler. “We hope that this study will stimulate a scientific discussion about the historical human influence even in supposedly remote regions of Eastern Siberia. Especially in light of the fact that the fire regimes of the boreal zone will continue to intensify here as the climate continues to warm - with unknown effects on the stability of ecosystems and jeopardising the local population.”
Original Publication
Glückler, R., Dietze, E., Andreev, A. A., Kruse, S., Zakharov, E. S., Baisheva, I. A., Stieg, A., Tsuyuzaki, S., Pestryakova, L. A., & Herzschuh, U. (2026). Human activity may have influenced Holocene wildfire dynamics in boreal eastern Siberia. Communications Earth & Environment. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03169-1