UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., May 19 -- Pennsylvania State University issued the following news release:
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - For the past several years, Penn State geoscientist Sarah Ivory and her students have been among a team of scientists scaling the East African Rwenzori Mountains, collecting sediment core samples from lakes formed at the end of the last ice age as glaciers began receding in the region some 12,000 years ago.
Among those cores was a surprising revelation: A 2012 wildfire that ravaged 16 square miles of the forest and alpine landscapes at more than 13,000 feet above sea level was unprecedented in at least the last 12,000 years. The researchers also found evidence in fossilized pollen that the fire significantly shifted the ...