Sedimentary charcoal is the most ubiquitous paleofire proxy, yet uncertainties remain in our ability to interpret it. Particularly, charcoal source area and the distinguishability of charcoal signals from human-caused versus wildfire remain persistent areas of ongoing research. This paper focuses on sedimentary charcoal data from Ditch Pond, a small lake located in the Conecuh National Forest (NF) of southern Alabama, USA, where prescribed fire (Rx-fire) dominates the landscape. We compare charcoal accumulation rate data from Ditch Pond with historical fire data to determine the charcoal source area of Ditch Pond and its human-dominated fire activity. We find that the relevant charcoal source area of Ditch Pond is ~40 km, a magnitude consistent with previous source area estimates in wildfire-dominated landscapes. This finding suggests that human-caused and natural fire are spatially indistinguishable in paleofire records. However, our results conform with the common interpretation that although human impacts on fire may be detected locally (i.e. via comparison with other proxies like fecal sterols, archeological data, or pollen), they are unlikely to be distinguishable on broader spatial scales from climate-driven wildfire. Therefore, our results support using multi-proxy, spatial, or modeling approaches (e.g. to simulate the spatial self-similarity of wildfire) as comparative means of identifying human components of charcoal records. Last, our results are at odds with the traditional conceptualizations of primarily localized charcoal source areas.
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