Prescribed burning of logging slash in the boreal forest of Finland: emissions and effects on meteorological quantities and soil properties

Abstract

Abstract. A prescribed fire experiment was conducted on 26 June 2009 in Hyytiälä, Finland, to study aerosol and trace gas emissions from prescribed fires of slash fuels and the effects of fire on soil properties in a controlled environment. A 0.8 ha forest near the SMEAR II measurement station (Station for Measuring Ecosystem-Atmosphere Relations) was cut clear; some tree trunks, all tree tops and branches were left on the ground and burned. The amount of burned organic material was ∼46.8 tons (i.e., ∼60 tons ha −1 ). The flaming phase lasted 2 h 15 min, the smoldering phase 3 h. Measurements were conducted on the ground with both fixed and mobile instrumentation, and in the air from a research aircraft. In the middle of the burning area, CO 2 concentration peaked around 2000-3000 ppm above the baseline, and peak vertical flow velocities were ∼9 m s −1 , as measured with a 10 Hz 3-D sonic anemometer placed within the burn area. In the mobile measurements the peak particle number concentrations were approximately 1-2 × 10 6 cm −3 in the plume at a distance of 100-200 m from the burn area. On the ground at the SMEAR II station the geometric mean diameter of the mode with the highest concentration was 80 ± 1 nm during the flaming phase and in the middle of the smoldering phase, but, at the end of the smoldering phase, the largest mode was 122 nm. In the volume size distributions, geometric mean diameter of the largest volume mode was 153 nm during the flaming phase and 300 nm during the smoldering phase. The lowest single-scattering albedo of the groundlevel measurements was 0.7 in the flaming-phase plume and ∼0.9 in the smoldering phase. Elevated concentrations of several volatile organic compounds (VOC) (including acetonitrile, a biomass burning marker) were observed in the smoke plume at ground level. Measurements at the forest floor (i.e., a richly organic layer of soil and debris, characteristic of forested land) showed that VOC fluxes were generally low and consisted mainly of monoterpenes, and VOC flux peaked after the burning. After one year, the fluxes had Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 4474A. Virkkula et al.: Prescribed burning of logging slash in the boreal forest of Finland nearly stabilized close to the level before the burning. The clear-cutting and burning of slash increased the total longterm CO 2 release from the soil, and altered the physical, chemical and biological properties of the soil, such as increased the available nitrogen contents of the soil, which in turn, affected the long-term fluxes of greenhouse gases.

Applicability of an integrated plume rise model for the dispersion from wild-land fires

“…A more detailed overview of the experiment and selected results is presented in Virkkula et al (2014a); the airborne measurements are discussed in more detail in Schobesberger et al (2013) and Virkkula et al (2014b). The goals of the experiment were to study the aerosol chemical composition and physical characteristics, the concentrations of gaseous compounds, the detection of fires using satellite remote sensing, and the modelling of both fire spreading and atmospheric dispersion of the fire plume.…”

“…58.1 t ha −1 ). Approximately 64 % of the burned material consisted of cut tree material, 32 % of organic litter and humus layer, and about 4 % of surface vegetation (Virkkula et al, 2014a).…”

“…Ground-based instrumentation included the SMEAR II stations, together with meteorological and ecological measurements on and around the site (Virkkula et al, 2014a). Ground-level measurement of particles and trace gases was also carried out by using a movable research van, and by using portable particle counters at different distances from the burning area.…”

“…The fire temperature and vertical flow velocity were measured with a sonic anemometer installed in the middle of the burn area at a height of 10 m (Virkkula et al, 2014a). The data were measured at a frequency of 10 Hz from 08:00 to 10:39 LT.…”

“…These are the "Smoke, Clouds and Radiation -California" experiment (SCAR-C) in Quinault in the US in 1994 (e.g. Kaufman et al, 1996;Hobbs et al, 1996;Gassó and Hegg, 1998) and an experiment in Hyytiälä in Finland in 2009 (Virkkula et al, 2014a, b;Schobesberger et al, 2013). We have also compared the predictions of a simple semi-empirical model of Sofiev et al (2012) with the measurements of the above-mentioned two prescribed fires, and with the predictions of the BUOYANT model.…”