More wildfires in sub-arctic forests heat up our Earth

Climate News Links on March 27, 2022

Northwest_Crown_Fire_Experiment1.png

Burned forests usually resist new fires for many years. A warming Arctic is making fires more frequent and carbon emissions higher

The study area spans the entirety of interior Alaska. Fires burned in the satellite record (Landsat and MTBS program), locations of overlapping fires (short-interval fires, 2 +) and ecoregions denoted. Inset shows fire footprints within North America. Map created in ESRI ArcPro 2.5.1. (from the Article

by Buma et al., 22/03/2022 in Scientific Reports

Short-interval fires increasing in the Alaskan boreal forest as fire self-regulation decays across forest types:

Climate drivers are increasingly creating conditions conducive to higher frequency fires. In the coniferous boreal forest, the world’s largest terrestrial biome, fires are historically common but relatively infrequent. Post-fire, regenerating forests are generally resistant to burning (strong fire self-regulation), favoring millennial coniferous resilience. However, short intervals between fires are associated with rapid, threshold-like losses of resilience and changes to broadleaf or shrub communities, impacting carbon content, habitat, and other ecosystem services.

Read the complete article…..

Featured Image: (Photograph used by permission of the USDA Forest Service.) – Bunk S: World on Fire. PLoS Biol 2/2/2004: e54. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020054.g001 / Permission details: This file was published in a Public Library of Science journal. Their website states CC BY 2.5 / File:Northwest Crown Fire Experiment.png / Created: Published: 17 February 2004

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