North American boreal forests are a large carbon source due to wildfires from 1986 to 2016

Zhao, Bailu; Zhuang, Qianlai; Shurpali, Narasinha J.; Köster, Egle; Berninger, Frank; Pumpanen, Jukka

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-87343-3

Cited by 42 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 89 publications

(128 reference statements)

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“…In line with the general recognition of North American forests acting as a carbon sink (Pan et al, 2011), we observed either a positive or neutral net NABP in the Northern American Boreal and Temperate regions. Negative NABP estimates were also observed locally that could be associated with fire regimes (Zhao et al, 2021).…”

Section: Global Patterns Of Forest Carbon Changesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Global sensitivities of forest carbon changes to environmental conditions

Besnard

Santoro

Cartus

et al. 2021

Global Change Biology

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The responses of forest carbon dynamics to fluctuations in environmental conditions at a global scale remain elusive. Despite the understanding that favourable environmental conditions promote forest growth, these responses have been challenging to observe across different ecosystems and climate gradients. Based on a global annual time series of aboveground biomass (AGB) estimated from radar satellites between 1992 and 2018, we present forest carbon changes and provide insights on their sensitivities to environmental conditions across scales. Our findings indicate differences in forest carbon changes across AGB classes, with regions with carbon stocks of 50–125 MgC ha−1 depict the highest forest carbon gains and losses, while regions with 125–150 MgC ha−1 have the lowest forest carbon gains and losses in absolute terms. Net forest carbon change estimates show that the arc‐of‐deforestation and the Congo Basin were the main hotspots of forest carbon loss, while a substantial part of European forest gained carbon during the last three decades. Furthermore, we observe that changes in forest carbon stocks were systematically positively correlated with changes in forest cover fraction. At the same time, it was not necessarily the case with other environmental variables, such as air temperature and water availability at the bivariate level. We also used a model attribution method to demonstrate that atmospheric conditions were the dominant control of forest carbon changes (56% of the total study area) followed by water‐related (29% of the total study area) and vegetation (15% of the total study area) conditions. Regionally, we find evidence that carbon gains from long‐term forest growth covary with long‐term carbon sinks inferred from atmospheric inversions. Our results describe the contributions from the atmosphere, water‐related and vegetation conditions to forest carbon changes and provide new insights into the underlying mechanisms of the coupling between forest growth and the global carbon cycle.

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Section: Global Patterns Of Forest Carbon Changesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Global sensitivities of forest carbon changes to environmental conditions

Besnard

Santoro

Cartus

et al. 2021

Global Change Biology

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“…Nutrients, trace elements, and pollutants are also released during soil warming, affecting plant growth, microbial activity, and human health (Keuper et al, 2012;Chen et al, 2018;Hewitt et al, 2018;Carey et al, 2019;UNEP, 2019;Mu et al, 2020b;Yang et al, 2021;Basu et al, 2022). While increased nutrient availability and CO 2 fertilization have long been predicted to enhance plant uptake of atmospheric CO 2 , observed trends of primary productivity in the permafrost domain have been mixed because of vegetation shifts, droughts, and other disturbances (Forbes et al, 2010;Hayes et al, 2011;Abbott et al, 2016b;McGuire et al, 2018;Rocha et al, 2018;Myers-Smith et al, 2020;Bruhwiler et al, 2021;Mack et al, 2021;Zhao et al, 2021;Vitali et al, 2022).…”

Section: Unstable Footing: Terrestrial Permafrost Degradationmentioning

confidence: 99%

We Must Stop Fossil Fuel Emissions to Protect Permafrost Ecosystems

Abbott

Brown²,

Carey

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Climate change is an existential threat to the vast global permafrost domain. The diverse human cultures, ecological communities, and biogeochemical cycles of this tenth of the planet depend on the persistence of frozen conditions. The complexity, immensity, and remoteness of permafrost ecosystems make it difficult to grasp how quickly things are changing and what can be done about it. Here, we summarize terrestrial and marine changes in the permafrost domain with an eye toward global policy. While many questions remain, we know that continued fossil fuel burning is incompatible with the continued existence of the permafrost domain as we know it. If we fail to protect permafrost ecosystems, the consequences for human rights, biosphere integrity, and global climate will be severe. The policy implications are clear: the faster we reduce human emissions and draw down atmospheric CO2, the more of the permafrost domain we can save. Emissions reduction targets must be strengthened and accompanied by support for local peoples to protect intact ecological communities and natural carbon sinks within the permafrost domain. Some proposed geoengineering interventions such as solar shading, surface albedo modification, and vegetation manipulations are unproven and may exacerbate environmental injustice without providing lasting protection. Conversely, astounding advances in renewable energy have reopened viable pathways to halve human greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and effectively stop them well before 2050. We call on leaders, corporations, researchers, and citizens everywhere to acknowledge the global importance of the permafrost domain and work towards climate restoration and empowerment of Indigenous and immigrant communities in these regions.

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“…Forest fires are fast-spreading, sudden and difficult to control. They cause massive forest damage and severely affect the composition of ecosystems, leading to a dramatic reduction in biomass and drastic changes in the landscape and the global carbon cycle ( Xaud, da Martins & Dos Santos, 2013 ; De Faria et al, 2017 ; Liu, Ballantyne & Cooper, 2019 ; Zhao et al, 2021b , 2021a ). In recent years, global warming and frequent human production activities have increased forest fires worldwide ( Hall et al, 2016 ; Forkel et al, 2019 ; Vargas-Cuentas & Roman-Gonzalez, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote sensing technology for rapid extraction of burned areas and ecosystem environmental assessment

Zhang

Bai

Wang

et al. 2023

PeerJ

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Forest fires are one of the significant disturbances in forest ecosystems. It is essential to extract burned areas rapidly and accurately to formulate forest restoration strategies and plan restoration plans. In this work, we constructed decision trees and used a combination of differential normalized burn ratio (dNBR) index and OTSU threshold method to extract the heavily and mildly burned areas. The applicability of this method was evaluated with three fires in Muli County, Sichuan, China, and we concluded that the extraction accuracy of this method could reach 97.69% and 96.37% for small area forest fires, while the extraction accuracy was lower for large area fires, only 89.32%. In addition, the remote sensing environment index (RSEI) was used to evaluate the ecological environment changes. It analyzed the change of the RSEI level through the transition matrix, and all three fires showed that the changes in RSEI were stronger for heavily burned areas than for mildly burned areas, after the forest fire the ecological environment (RSEI) was reduced from good to moderate. These results realized the quantitative evaluation and dynamic evaluation of the ecological environment condition, providing an essential basis for the restoration, decision making and management of the affected forests.

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North American boreal forests are a large carbon source due to wildfires from 1986 to 2016

Cited by 42 publications

References 89 publications

Global sensitivities of forest carbon changes to environmental conditions

Global sensitivities of forest carbon changes to environmental conditions

We Must Stop Fossil Fuel Emissions to Protect Permafrost Ecosystems

Remote sensing technology for rapid extraction of burned areas and ecosystem environmental assessment

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