Estimating burn severity and carbon emissions from a historic megafire in boreal forests of China

Xu, Wenru; He, Hong S.; Hawbaker, Todd J.; Zhu, Zhiliang; Henne, Paul D.

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.136534

Cited by 24 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Future emissions from fires are difficult to predict, and here more work is needed. For example, emissions from functionally uncontrollable fires in boreal forests are not well quantified due to uncertainties in combustion efficiency observations and estimates (Xu et al, 2020). Improving our understanding of the future of Arctic fires and fire emissions will also allow us to better predict future Earth system processes -both at high latitudes and globally.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…in Siberia. For instance, recent work in the Sakha Republic found that a 36 km 2 wildfire in an open larch with shrub and moss lichen landscape northwest of the Batagaika megaslump resulted in approximately 3.5 million cubic metres of thawed permafrost 5 years later (Yanagiya and Furuya, 2020). Likewise, uncertainties persist for post-fire permafrost resiliency in the boreal forests of eastern Canadian, like Quebec and Labrador (Holloway et al, 2020).…”

Section: Permafrostmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reviews and syntheses: Arctic fire regimes and emissions in the 21st century

et al. 2021

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Abstract. In recent years, the pan-Arctic region has experienced increasingly extreme fire seasons. Fires in the northern high latitudes are driven by current and future climate change, lightning, fuel conditions, and human activity. In this context, conceptualizing and parameterizing current and future Arctic fire regimes will be important for fire and land management as well as understanding current and predicting future fire emissions. The objectives of this review were driven by policy questions identified by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) Working Group and posed to its Expert Group on Short-Lived Climate Forcers. This review synthesizes current understanding of the changing Arctic and boreal fire regimes, particularly as fire activity and its response to future climate change in the pan-Arctic have consequences for Arctic Council states aiming to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the north. The conclusions from our synthesis are the following. (1) Current and future Arctic fires, and the adjacent boreal region, are driven by natural (i.e. lightning) and human-caused ignition sources, including fires caused by timber and energy extraction, prescribed burning for landscape management, and tourism activities. Little is published in the scientific literature about cultural burning by Indigenous populations across the pan-Arctic, and questions remain on the source of ignitions above 70∘ N in Arctic Russia. (2) Climate change is expected to make Arctic fires more likely by increasing the likelihood of extreme fire weather, increased lightning activity, and drier vegetative and ground fuel conditions. (3) To some extent, shifting agricultural land use and forest transitions from forest–steppe to steppe, tundra to taiga, and coniferous to deciduous in a warmer climate may increase and decrease open biomass burning, depending on land use in addition to climate-driven biome shifts. However, at the country and landscape scales, these relationships are not well established. (4) Current black carbon and PM2.5 emissions from wildfires above 50 and 65∘ N are larger than emissions from the anthropogenic sectors of residential combustion, transportation, and flaring. Wildfire emissions have increased from 2010 to 2020, particularly above 60∘ N, with 56 % of black carbon emissions above 65∘ N in 2020 attributed to open biomass burning – indicating how extreme the 2020 wildfire season was and how severe future Arctic wildfire seasons can potentially be. (5) What works in the boreal zones to prevent and fight wildfires may not work in the Arctic. Fire management will need to adapt to a changing climate, economic development, the Indigenous and local communities, and fragile northern ecosystems, including permafrost and peatlands. (6) Factors contributing to the uncertainty of predicting and quantifying future Arctic fire regimes include underestimation of Arctic fires by satellite systems, lack of agreement between Earth observations and official statistics, and still needed refinements of location, conditions, and previous fire return intervals on peat and permafrost landscapes. This review highlights that much research is needed in order to understand the local and regional impacts of the changing Arctic fire regime on emissions and the global climate, ecosystems, and pan-Arctic communities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Permafrostmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reviews and syntheses: Arctic fire regimes and emissions in the 21st century

et al. 2021

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“…Future emissions from fires are difficult to predict and here more work is needed. For example, emissions from functionally uncontrollable fires in boreal forests are not well quantified due to uncertainties in combustion efficiency observations and estimates (Xu et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reviews & Syntheses: Arctic Fire Regimes and Emissions in the 21st Century

McCarty¹,

Aalto²,

Paunu³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. In recent years, the Pan-Arctic region has experienced increasingly extreme fire seasons. Fires in the northern high latitudes are driven by current and future climate change, lightning, fuel conditions, and human activity. In this context, conceptualizing and parameterizing current and future Arctic fire regimes will be important for fire and land management as well as understanding current and predicting future fire emissions. The objectives of this review were driven by policy questions identified by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) Working Group and posed to its Expert Group on Short-Lived Climate Forcers. This review synthesises current understanding of the changing Arctic and boreal fire regimes, particularly as fire activity and its response to future climate change in the Pan-Arctic has consequences for Arctic Council states aiming to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the north. The conclusions from our synthesis are the following: (1) Current and future Arctic fires, and the adjacent boreal region, are driven by natural (i.e., lightning) and human-caused ignition sources, including fires caused by timber and energy extraction, prescribed burning for landscape management, and tourism activities. Little is published in the scientific literature about cultural burning by Indigenous populations across the Pan-Arctic and questions remain on the source of ignitions above 70° N in Arctic Russia. (2) Climate change is expected to make Arctic fires more likely by increasing the likelihood of extreme fire weather, increased lightning activity, and drier vegetative and ground fuel conditions. (3) To some extent, shifting agricultural land use, forest-steppe to steppe, tundra-to-taiga, and coniferous-to-deciduous forest transitions in a warmer climate may increase and decrease open biomass burning. However, at the country- and landscape-scales, these relationships are not well established. (4) Current black carbon and PM2.5 emissions from wildfires above 50° N and 65° N are larger than emissions from the anthropogenic sectors of residential combustion, transportation, and flaring, respectively. Wildfire emissions have increased from 2010 to 2020, particularly above 60° N, with 56 % of black carbon emissions above 65° N in 2020 attributed to open biomass burning – indicating how extreme the 2020 wildfire season was and future Arctic wildfire seasons potential. (5) What works in the boreal zones to prevent and fight wildfires may not work in the Arctic. Fire management will need to adapt to a changing climate, economic development, the Indigenous and local communities, and fragile northern ecosystems, including permafrost and peatlands. (6) Factors contributing to the uncertainty of predicting and quantifying future Arctic fire regimes include underestimation of Arctic fires by satellite systems, lack of agreement between Earth observations and official statistics, and still needed refinements of location, conditions, and previous fire return intervals on peat and permafrost landscapes. This review highlights that much research is needed in order to understand the local and regional impacts of the changing Arctic fire regime on emissions and the global climate, ecosystems and Pan-Arctic communities.

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“…Despite the influence of soil background signal and transferability issues that may hinder the performance of Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR)-based indices in burn severity initial assessments [21,59,60], threshold-based classification of the differenced NBR (dNBR; [61]) index is the most widely accepted approach for this purpose [62,63]. In fact, the dNBR is the primary spectral index within the Rapid Damage Assessment (RDA) module of European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) and the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) project (together with RdNBR; [64]) in the United States.…”

Section: Burn Severity Mappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Short-Term Recovery of the Aboveground Carbon Stock in Iberian Shrublands at the Extremes of an Environmental Gradient and as a Function of Burn Severity

Fernández‐Guisuraga

Calvo

Fernandes

et al. 2022

Forests

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The degree to which burn severity influences the recovery of aboveground carbon density (ACD) of live pools in shrublands remains unclear. Multitemporal LiDAR data was used to evaluate ACD recovery three years after fire in shrubland ecosystems as a function of burn severity immediately after fire across an environmental and productivity gradient in the western Mediterranean Basin. Two large mixed-severity wildfires were assessed: an Atlantic site, dominated by resprouter shrubs and located at the most productive extreme of the gradient, and a Mediterranean site, dominated by obligate seeders and located at the less productive extreme. Initial assessment of burn severity was performed using the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio index computed from Landsat imagery. Thresholds for low and high burn severity categories were established using the Composite Burn Index (CBI). LiDAR canopy metrics were calibrated with field measurements of mean shrub height and cover at plot level in a post-fire situation. Pre-fire and post-fire ACD estimates, and their ratio (ACDr) to calculate carbon stock recovery, were computed from the predictions of LiDAR grid metrics at landscape level using shrubland allometric relationships. Overall, ACDr decreased both with high burn severity and low productivity, although the burn severity impact was not homogeneous within the gradient. In the Atlantic site, ACDr was similar under low and high burn severity, whereas it decreased with burn severity in the Mediterranean site. These results suggest that carbon cycling models could be biased by not accounting for both fire severity and species composition of shrublands under different environmental conditions.

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Estimating burn severity and carbon emissions from a historic megafire in boreal forests of China

Cited by 24 publications

References 64 publications

Reviews and syntheses: Arctic fire regimes and emissions in the 21st century

Reviews and syntheses: Arctic fire regimes and emissions in the 21st century

Reviews & Syntheses: Arctic Fire Regimes and Emissions in the 21st Century

Short-Term Recovery of the Aboveground Carbon Stock in Iberian Shrublands at the Extremes of an Environmental Gradient and as a Function of Burn Severity

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Estimating burn severity and carbon emissions from a historic megafire in boreal forests of China

Cited by 24 publications

References 64 publications

Reviews and syntheses: Arctic fire regimes and emissions in the 21st century

Reviews and syntheses: Arctic fire regimes and emissions in the 21st century

Reviews &amp; Syntheses: Arctic Fire Regimes and Emissions in the 21st Century

Short-Term Recovery of the Aboveground Carbon Stock in Iberian Shrublands at the Extremes of an Environmental Gradient and as a Function of Burn Severity

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Reviews & Syntheses: Arctic Fire Regimes and Emissions in the 21st Century