Direct carbon emissions from Canadian forest fires, 1959-1999

Amiro, B.D.; Todd, J.B.; Wotton, B.M.; Logan, K. A.; Flannigan, Mike D.; Mason, J.A.; Martell, D.L.; Hirsch, K.G.

doi:10.1139/cjfr-31-3-512

Cited by 116 publications

(211 citation statements)

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“…This has been possible owing to: (i) the large set of charcoal data that has been gathered from across a wide territory, and that is publicly available and regularly enriched by new data ; and (ii) the modern large-scale studies of carbon released by fires that have been conducted over wide regions, and that have taken into account the different vegetation zones, and the variation in fuel quality and landscape structure (e.g. French et al 2000;Amiro et al 2001Amiro et al , 2009). The following discussion highlights the importance of the type of vegetation zone and climatic change on the millennial-scale dynamics of carbon transfer into the atmosphere, and concludes with a budget that compares our findings with global trends.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data were sampled from sites that were representative of the four major vegetation types or ecozones that correspond to the Canadian vegetation classification edited by the Canadian Committee on Ecological Land Classification (Wiken 1986;SISCan 2008), and which are used in the fire carbon emission database (e.g. Amiro et al 2001Amiro et al , 2009). The four ecozones (Table 1) that occur in our studied area were as follows: the Mixedwood Plains, which are a mixed forest zone dominated by broadleaf deciduous tree-species; the Atlantic Maritime, composed of mixed forests dominated by evergreen needle-leaf trees; the Boreal Shield ecozone, which is represented by closed forests of evergreen needle-leaf trees; and the eastern Taiga Shield, composed of lakes, wetlands and open evergreen or deciduous needle-leaf forests interwoven with shrublands (ericaceous, dwarf willows and birches) and meadows more typical of the Arctic tundra.…”

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During the late Holocene, summer cooling occurred in eastern Canada and the net precipitation budget was higher (Payette and Filion 1993;Yu et al 1996;Lavoie and Richard 2000;Moos et al 2009), but summer droughts were probably more frequent, resulting in increased fire occurrence (Payette and Gagnon 1985;Carcaillet and Richard 2000;Power et al 2008). Estimates of current carbon emissions from vegetation fires (Amiro et al 2001(Amiro et al , 2009 Table 1) are based on a database of large fires in Canada, recorded over the period 1959-99 for all the Canadian ecozones. Amiro et al (2001Amiro et al ( , 2009) report differences in the occurrence of fires across the Boreal Shield and Taiga Shield ecozones due to the strong east-west moisture gradient (east being wetter) that can affect certain properties of the forest environment.…”

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Estimates of current carbon emissions from vegetation fires (Amiro et al 2001(Amiro et al , 2009 Table 1) are based on a database of large fires in Canada, recorded over the period 1959-99 for all the Canadian ecozones. Amiro et al (2001Amiro et al ( , 2009) report differences in the occurrence of fires across the Boreal Shield and Taiga Shield ecozones due to the strong east-west moisture gradient (east being wetter) that can affect certain properties of the forest environment. The Taiga Shield ecozone is composed of the Taiga Shield West and the Taiga Shield East with Hudson Bay as the divider, which also splits the Boreal Shield ecozone at the northern tip of Lake Superior into the Boreal Shield West and Boreal Shield East ecozones.…”

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These temporal variations are partly due to differences in biomass composition, different ecozone histories (Fig. 2), and differences in the rates of carbon released by fires (French et al 2000;Amiro et al 2001Amiro et al , 2009, which are in turn linked to diverse ecosystem properties such as fuel quality and quantity (Hély et al 2001). The two northern ecozones (Boreal and Taiga Shield East) are more fire-prone, being mainly composed of needle-leaf tree species.…”

Section: Carbon Release and Vegetation Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of vegetation zones and climatic changes on fire-induced atmospheric carbon emissions: a model based on paleodata

Brémond¹,

Carcaillet²,

Favier³

et al. 2010

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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Abstract. An original method is proposed for estimating past carbon emissions from fires in order to understand longterm changes in the biomass burning that, together with vegetation cover, act on the global carbon cycle and climate. The past carbon release resulting from paleo-fires during the Holocene is examined using a simple linear model between measured carbon emissions from modern fires and sedimentary charcoal records of biomass burning within boreal and cold temperate forests in eastern Canada (Quebec, Ontario). Direct carbon emissions are estimated for each ecozone for the present period and the fire anomaly per kilo annum (ka) v. present day (0 ka) deduced from charcoal series of 46 lakes and peats. Over the postglacial, the Taiga Shield ecozone does not match the pattern of fire history and carbon release of Boreal Shield, Atlantic Maritime, and Mixedwood Plains ecozones. This feature results from different air mass influences and the timing of vegetation dynamics. Our estimations show, first, that the contribution of the Mixedwood Plains and the Atlantic Maritime ecozones on the total carbon emissions by fires remains negligible compared with the Boreal Shield. Second, the Taiga Shield plays a key role by maintaining important carbon emissions, given it is today a lower contributor.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Carbon Release and Vegetation Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Effects of vegetation zones and climatic changes on fire-induced atmospheric carbon emissions: a model based on paleodata

Brémond¹,

Carcaillet²,

Favier³

et al. 2010

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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Wildfires in boreal ecoregions: Evaluating the power law assumption and intra‐annual and interannual variations

Lehsten

Groot

Flannigan

et al. 2014

J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci.

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[1] Wildfires are a major driver of ecosystem development and contributor to carbon emissions in boreal forests. We analyzed the contribution of fires of different fire size classes to the total burned area and suggest a novel fire characteristic, the characteristic fire size, i.e., the fire size class with the highest contribution to the burned area, its relation to bioclimatic conditions, and intra-annual and interannual variation. We used the Canadian National Fire Database (using data from 1960 to 2010) and a novel satellite-based burned area data set (2001 to 2011). We found that the fire size distribution is best explained by a normal distribution in log space in contrast to the power law-based linear fire area relationship which has prevailed in the literature so far. We attribute the difference to previous studies in the scale invariance mainly to the large extent of the investigated ecoregion as well as to unequal binning or limiting the range at which the relationship is analyzed; in this way we also question the generality of the scale invariance for ecoregions even outside the boreal domain. The characteristic fire sizes and the burned area show a weak correlation, indicating different mechanisms behind each feature. Fire sizes are found to depend markedly on the ecoregion and have increased over the last five decades for Canada in total, being most pronounced in the early season. In the late season fire size and area decreased, indicating an earlier start of the fire season.Citation: Lehsten, V., W. J. de Groot, M. Flannigan, C. George, P. Harmand, and H. Balzter (2014), Wildfires in boreal ecoregions: Evaluating the power law assumption and intra-annual and interannual variations,

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Quantifying fire‐wide carbon emissions in interior Alaska using field measurements and Landsat imagery

Rogers

Veraverbeke

Azzari

et al. 2014

J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci.

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Carbon emissions from boreal forest fires are projected to increase with continued warming and constitute a potentially significant positive feedback to climate change. The highest consistent combustion levels are reported in interior Alaska and can be highly variable depending on the consumption of soil organic matter. Here we present an approach for quantifying emissions within a fire perimeter using remote sensing of fire severity. Combustion from belowground and aboveground pools was quantified at 22 sites (17 black spruce and five white spruce-aspen) within the 2010 Gilles Creek burn in interior Alaska, constrained by data from eight unburned sites. We applied allometric equations and estimates of consumption to calculate carbon losses from aboveground vegetation. The position of adventitious spruce roots within the soil column, together with estimated prefire bulk density and carbon concentrations, was used to quantify belowground combustion. The differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) exhibited a clear but nonlinear relationship with combustion that differed by forest type. We used a multiple regression model based on transformed dNBR and deciduous fraction to scale carbon emissions to the fire perimeter, and a Monte Carlo framework to assess uncertainty. Because of low-severity and unburned patches, mean combustion across the fire perimeter (1.98 ± 0.34 kg C m À2) was considerably less than within a defined core burn area (2.67 ± 0.40 kg C m À2) and the mean at field sites (2.88 ± 0.23 kg C m À2). These areas constitute a significant fraction of burn perimeters in Alaska but are generally not accounted for in regional-scale estimates. Although total combustion in black spruce was slightly lower than in white spruce-aspen forests, black spruce covered most of the fire perimeter (62%) and contributed the majority (67 ± 16%) of total emissions. Increases in spring albedo were found to be a viable alternative to dNBR for modeling emissions.

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Direct carbon emissions from Canadian forest fires, 1959-1999

Cited by 116 publications

References 0 publications

Effects of vegetation zones and climatic changes on fire-induced atmospheric carbon emissions: a model based on paleodata

Effects of vegetation zones and climatic changes on fire-induced atmospheric carbon emissions: a model based on paleodata

Wildfires in boreal ecoregions: Evaluating the power law assumption and intra‐annual and interannual variations

Quantifying fire‐wide carbon emissions in interior Alaska using field measurements and Landsat imagery

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