I am an Earth Scientist specialising in the study of natural fires in the Earth system. I hope to increase our understanding of the importance of natural fires and convey this to all walks of life. I have chosen Carbonmade to host my web presence as I hope it will encourage new interactions with people outside of science, I have tried to highlight interesting collaborations within my science based projects and via my project entitled Science and Art.
Why do I study Fire?
Fire is an under-appreciated process within the Earth system and is often overlooked, yet fire is the most ubiquitous natural terrestrial disturbance. Fire consumes huge quantities of biomass in all ecosystems ranging across all biomes from tundra to savanna and from boreal to tropical forests. Fires also provide a significant positive feedback on global warming via the release of CO2, where 2078–2460Tg of carbon are released per year by wildfires. Fire has been a major influence on Earth’s systems since the Carboniferous (~350 million years ago!). Throughout this long history fire has played the role of cause, consequence and catalyst to the development of terrestrial life on Earth. Climate is considered the ultimate control on global vegetation where fire is known to play a key role in determining vegetation structure and composition, such that many of the world’s ecosystems can be considered fire-dependant. Products of fire include chars, ashes, soots and aromatic hydrocarbon species all of which can be traced in ancient through to modern sediments. Moreover, soots (or Black Carbon) are omnipresent in the modern atmosphere, ice, soils and sediments . The rock record of black carbon and charcoals have been used to assess ancient records of wildfires, the effects of mass extinction events, past atmospheric oxygen content, plant evolution and ancient plant expansion. This diversity of research stretches across geological, palaeontological, chemical, and engineering disciplines. My research aims to provide information essential to our understanding of how fires effect the Earth system via integrating cutting edge modern methods into deep time studies toward promoting why it is important to understanding Earths past history and long-term environmental changes over million year timescales.
Research Summary
Over the past 8 years my work has focused on providing real measured data for testing the output of numerical models, and I have tried to established a reputation for my novel use of the fossil fire record and modern combustion experiments. I have interrogated the fossil record of fires to answer questions ranging from the mechanisms of mass extinction, the amounts of thermal radiation delivered by asteroid impacts, the composition of the Earth's atmosphere to the effects of climate-driven vegetation change on fire activity. My key scientific contributions and internationally recognised work are: (1) analysing the causes for the K-T Boundary mass extinction event (65 million years ago), where I tested the hypothesis that global wildfires were ignited by the K-T asteroid impact event (Belcher et al., Geology, 2003; 2004) and whether the impact was capable of combusting a large volume of hydrocarbon material (Belcher et al., PNAS, 2009); (2) using the wildfire record of the K-T event I tested previous numerical models of the K-T impact and was able to place constraints on thermal radiation delivered from this impact (Belcher et al., J. Geol. Soc., 2005); (3) development of state-of-the-art controlled atmosphere combustion experiments and relating these to ancient atmospheric composition (particularly oxygen levels) (Belcher and McElwain, Science, 2008). I my goal has been to develop new techniques to interpret rapid global change events in Earth history.
My most recent research focuses on the effects of climate-driven ecosystems change on fire frequencies. In order to achieve this I have joined forces with Dr Guillermo Rein at the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering Centre at The University of Edinburgh http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~grein/ . The initial phases of this project are based around using an ancient global warming event (the Triassic-Jurassic boundary event ~200 million years ago) to understand how our future climate crisis might affect fire frequencies in coniferous forests.
A Brief C.V.
Current Position
Marie Curie Experienced Research Fellow at
School of Geosciences and BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, U.K.
http://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/fire/staff-claire.html
http://edinburgh.academia.edu/ClaireMBelcher
Previous Position
Marie Curie Experienced Research Fellow at
Program for Experimental Atmospheres and Climate (PEAC) University College Dublin (since 2007- Sept 2010) http://www.ucd.ie/plantpalaeo/index.html
Education
- Ph.D. (Lond.) Thesis: “Assessing the Evidence for Extensive Wildfires at the Cretaceous - Tertiary Boundary”. Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL), 2005. Supervisors: Prof. M.E Collinson, Prof. A.C. Scott (RHUL) and Prof. Sir P. Crane FRS (then at RBG Kew).
- M.Sc. (Lond.) Micropalaeontology, University College London, 2001.
- B.Sc. (Lond.) Geology, First Class Honours, Royal Holloway University of London, 2000.
Academic Awards
Palaeontological Association Annual Meeting: President’s Prize - Awarded for best oral presentation by a member of the association (aged under 30). The Palaeontological Association Annual Meeting, Lille, 2004.
Publication Award 2003 - For doctoral achievement; best publication 2003 (Belcher et al., 2003), RHUL.
The Tennant Medal - For highest exam scores by a final year geology B.Sc. student 2000, RHUL.
Kate and Harry Harper Chelsea Prize - For best 2nd year geology student 1999, RHUL.
Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland Student Award Winner 1999 - RHUL and Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Highest Exam Scores).
Primary Research Interests
- Affects of global warming on fire frequency and its ecosystem impacts
- Vegetation responses to climate change
- Fire feedbacks to the climate system
- Biogeochemical cycles, relationships between fires, runoff and primary productivity
- Plant atmosphere interactions/the role of plants in regulating atmospheric CO2 and O2
- Low O2 events/palaeoatmospheric oxygen concentrations in Earth history
- Climate and atmospheric dynamics
- Mass extinction events
- Stable carbon isotopes and biogeochemistry
- The record of wildfires at the Cretaceous-Tertiary and Triassic-Jurassic boundaries
- Accuracy of fossil charcoal as an indicator of palaeowildfires
Recent Invited Lectures
Invited speaker at School of Biological Sciences, Queens University, Belfast. 12th March, 2010. Asteroids, Atmospheres, Climate and Fire”.
Invited speaker at Irish Geological Association 17th February, 2010. “Dinosaurs, Asteroids, Atmospheres and Fire”.
Invited speaker at Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. 28th January, 2010. “Increased Fire Risk Associated with the Triassic-Jurassic Boundary Global Warming Event”.
Invited speaker at School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, U.K. 17th November, 2009. “Increased Fire Risk Associated with the Triassic-Jurassic Boundary Global Warming Event”.
Invited speaker at BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, University of Edinburgh, 12th May 2009. “Asteroids, Oxygen, Mass Extinctions and Fires”.
Invited speaker at University of Edinburgh School of Geosciences Global Change Seminars, 12th November 2008. “Limits for Combustion in Low O2 Redefine Palaeoatmospheric Predictions for the Mesozoic”.
Invited speaker at Geological Society of America Joint Meeting, Houston, Texas, U.S.A. 2008. Session Recoveries from Mass Extinctions: Patterns, Processes and Comparisons II. “Smoke Without Fire: Geochemical Evidence for Combustion of Hydrocarbons in the Target Rocks at Chicxulub”.
Publications (*Invited ^book chapter)
Belcher, C.M., Yearsley, J.M., Hadden R.M., McElwain, J.C., and Rein, G., (2010). Baseline intrinsic flammability of Earth's ecosystesm estimated from paleoatmospheric oxygen over the past 350 million years. PNAS Published online 13th December 2010 DOI:10.1073/pnas.1011974107
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/07/1011974107.abstract
*Claire M. Belcher (2010) From Fiery Beginnings: wildfires facilitated the spread of angiosperms in the Cretaceous. New Phytologist, 188, 913-915
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03528.x/full
Belcher, C.M., Mander, L., Rein, G., Jervis, F.X., Haworth, M., Glasspool, I.J., Hesselbo, S.P. and McElwain, J.C. (2010). Increased fire activity at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary in Greenland due to climate-driven floral change. Nature Geoscience, 6, 426 - 429.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n6/full/ngeo871.html
*Belcher, C.M. (2009). Reigniting the Cretaceous-Palaeogene Firestorm Debate. Research Focus Article. Geology, 37 (Dec 2009).
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/37/12/1147.short
Belcher, C.M., Finch, P., Collinson, M.E. and Scott, A.C., N.V. Grassineau (2009). Geochemical Evidence for Combustion of Hydrocarbons During the K-T Impact Event. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106; 4112-4117.
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/11/4112.full
Belcher, C.M. and McElwain, J.C., (2008). Limits on Combustion in Low O2 Redefine Palaeoatmospheric Levels for the Mesozoic. Science, 321; 1197-1200.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/321/5893/1197
Harvey, M.C., Brassell, S.C., Belcher, C.M. and Montanari, A., (2008). Combustion of Fossil Organic Matter at the K-P Boundary. Geology, 36; 355-358. (This paper was the was the most viewed article in Geology in May 2008).
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/36/5/355
Morgan, J., Lana, C., Kearsley, A., Coles, B., Belcher, C.M., Montanari, S., Dias, E., Barbosa, E. and Neumann, V., (2006). Analyses of Shocked Quartz at the Global K-P Boundary Indicate an Origin from a Single, High-Angle, Oblique Impact at Chicxulub. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 251; 264-279.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V61-4M3RP97-2&_user=103682&_coverDate=11%2F15%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1338220177&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000007921&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=103682&md5=906fead4172bb93a9b0bede3be919011
^Belcher, C.M., (2006). Impacts and Wildfires - An Analysis of the K-T Event. In, Koeberl, C. and Gilmour, I. (eds) “Biological Processes Associated with Impact Events” Springer Verlag; 221-243.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k4n5q783nj082523/
Belcher, C.M., Collinson, M.E. and Scott, A.C., (2005). Constraints on the Thermal Power Released from the Chicxulub Impactor: New Evidence from Multi-Method Charcoal Analysis. Journal of the Geological Society of London, 162; 591-602.
http://jgs.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/162/4/591
Belcher, C.M., Collinson, M.E., Sweet, A.R., Hildebrand, A.R. and Scott, A.C., (2004). Reply to comment on Fireball Passes and Nothing Burns - The Role of Thermal Radiation in the K-T Event: Evidence from the Charcoal Record of North America by Robertson et al., Geology online forum. Page e51. Published Online: March 2004, DOI 10.1130/0091-7613(2004)312.0.CO; 2
Belcher, C.M., Collinson, M.E., Sweet, A.R., Hildebrand, A.R. and Scott, A.C., (2003). Fireball Passes and Nothing Burns - The Role of Thermal Radiation in the K-T Event: Evidence from the Charcoal Record of North America. Geology, 31; 1061-1064.
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/31/12/1061
