An experimental assessment of the ignition of forest fuels by the thermal pulse generated by the Cretaceous–Palaeogene impact at Chicxulub. Belcher, C. M., Hadden, R. M., Rein, G., Morgan, J. V., Artemieva, N., & Goldin, T. Journal of the Geological Society, 172(2):175--185, March, 2015. ![An experimental assessment of the ignition of forest fuels by the thermal pulse generated by the Cretaceous–Palaeogene impact at Chicxulub [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper doi abstract bibtex A large extraterrestrial body hit the Yucatán Peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous period. Models suggest that a substantial amount of thermal radiation was delivered to the Earth’s surface by the impact, leading to the suggestion that it was capable of igniting extensive wildfires and contributed to the end-Cretaceous extinctions. We have reproduced in the laboratory the most intense impact-induced heat fluxes estimated to have reached different points on the Earth’s surface using a fire propagation apparatus and investigated the ignition potential of forest fuels. The experiments indicate that dry litter can ignite, but live fuels typically do not, suggesting that any ignition caused by impact-induced thermal radiation would have been strongly regional dependent. The intense, but short-lived, pulse downrange and at proximal and intermediate distances from the impact is insufficient to ignite live fuel. However, the less intense but longer-lasting thermal pulse at distal locations may have ignited areas of live fuels. Because plants and ecosystems are generally resistant to single localized fire events, we conclude that any fires ignited by impact-induced thermal radiation cannot be directly responsible for plant extinctions, implying that heat stress is only part of the end-Cretaceous story. This article is published by The Geological Society of London under the terms of the CC-BY 3.0 license. Publishing disclaimer: www.geolsoc.org.uk/pub_ethics
@article{belcher_experimental_2015,
title = {An experimental assessment of the ignition of forest fuels by the thermal pulse generated by the {Cretaceous}–{Palaeogene} impact at {Chicxulub}},
volume = {172},
issn = {0016-7649, 2041-479X},
url = {http://jgs.lyellcollection.org/content/172/2/175},
doi = {10.1144/jgs2014-082},
abstract = {A large extraterrestrial body hit the Yucatán Peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous period. Models suggest that a substantial amount of thermal radiation was delivered to the Earth’s surface by the impact, leading to the suggestion that it was capable of igniting extensive wildfires and contributed to the end-Cretaceous extinctions. We have reproduced in the laboratory the most intense impact-induced heat fluxes estimated to have reached different points on the Earth’s surface using a fire propagation apparatus and investigated the ignition potential of forest fuels. The experiments indicate that dry litter can ignite, but live fuels typically do not, suggesting that any ignition caused by impact-induced thermal radiation would have been strongly regional dependent. The intense, but short-lived, pulse downrange and at proximal and intermediate distances from the impact is insufficient to ignite live fuel. However, the less intense but longer-lasting thermal pulse at distal locations may have ignited areas of live fuels. Because plants and ecosystems are generally resistant to single localized fire events, we conclude that any fires ignited by impact-induced thermal radiation cannot be directly responsible for plant extinctions, implying that heat stress is only part of the end-Cretaceous story.
This article is published by The Geological Society of London under the terms of the CC-BY 3.0 license. Publishing disclaimer: www.geolsoc.org.uk/pub\_ethics},
language = {en},
number = {2},
urldate = {2017-04-04TZ},
journal = {Journal of the Geological Society},
author = {Belcher, Claire M. and Hadden, Rory M. and Rein, Guillermo and Morgan, Joanna V. and Artemieva, Natalia and Goldin, Tamara},
month = mar,
year = {2015},
pages = {175--185}
}
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