The severity of smouldering peat fires and damage to the forest soil

Rein, Guillermo; Cleaver, Natalie; Ashton, Clare; Pironi, Paolo; Torero, José L.

doi:10.1016/j.catena.2008.05.008

Cited by 285 publications

(265 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Rein et al (2008) also reported that peat soil moisture content above 135% still experienced ignition. Conclusion from the above discussion is that the maximum increase in capillary water was 50 cm of water level with the soil water content ranged from 141% to 181%, but if the top layer of soil was already open (GWL-2), so the top layer had entered the critical water content at a range of 105-127% at the end of observation.…”

Section: Water Content Of Peat Soilmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Capillary Water Rise in Peat Soil as Affected by Various Groundwater Levels

Nugraha

Annisa

Syaufina

et al. 2017

Indones. J. Agric. Sci.

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Capillary water in peatlands has a very important role in supplying water to the root zone of plants. The current water content in the root zone depends mainly on groundwater levels in some areas with shallow water levels. The study aimed to measure the capillary water dynamics in peat soils at various soil densities and groundwater levels which were observed from the changes in peat color, moisture distribution, water content and hydrophobicity of peat soil. The study was conducted in the greenhouse of Indonesian Swampland Agricultural Research Institute, Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan. The experiment was arranged in a randomized block design with two factors and three replications. The first factor was the bulk density (BD) of peat, namely BD-1 (on actual condition, 0.1 g cm -3 ) and BD-2 (compressed into 0.2 g cm -3 ). The second factor was simulated groundwater levels (GWL) consisting of GWL-1 (-100 cm), GWL-2 (-70 cm) and GWL-3 (-40 cm) from soil surfaces. The results showed that the rise of capillary water in peat soil reached a maximum height of 50 cm which was characterized by the increase in water content at the top layer in the range of 105-127% for BD-1 and 141-181% for BD-2. The highest value of water content (308%) was achieved in the treatment of GWL-3 with BD-2 and the lowest (37%) was in the treatment of GWL-1 with BD-1. The rate of capillary water rose progressively corresponded to the increase in BD value because the number of micropores of BD-2 was greater.

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Section: Water Content Of Peat Soilmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…The critical moisture content of peat experiencing ignition varied from 40% to 125% (Frandsen 1987;Rein et al 2008). Rein et al (2008) also reported that peat soil moisture content above 135% still experienced ignition.…”

Section: Water Content Of Peat Soilmentioning

confidence: 96%

Capillary Water Rise in Peat Soil as Affected by Various Groundwater Levels

Nugraha

Annisa

Syaufina

et al. 2017

Indones. J. Agric. Sci.

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“…For wildfires, similar critical values have been found associated to fuel moisture (Frandsen, 1997;Rein et al, 2008;Benscoter et al, 2011;Watson and Lovelock, 2013;Watts, 2013). Atmospheric oxygen and fuel moisture are two of the most crucial factors governing the ignition and spread of wildfires throughout Earth's history, more important than other properties like mineral content, chemical composition, and bulk density.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…After this, the temperature profile decreases to room temperature. For the ignition case (heating time t h = 73 s), at the end of heating, the peak temperature exceeds 600 • C, high enough to generate a smouldering front (Rein et al, 2008;. Smouldering then consumes all the fuel within 20 min, showing a clear difference to the no-ignition case.…”

Section: Smouldering Ignitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies have investigated the critical MC under the current atmosphere (X O 2 ∼ 21%) for smouldering peat fires through both experimental (Frandsen, 1997;Rein et al, 2008;Benscoter et al, 2011) and computational approaches. Their results confirmed for a given X O 2 , MC dominates smouldering, and different critical values exist for ignition (MC * ig ) and extinction (MC * ex ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interactions of Earth's atmospheric oxygen and fuel moisture in smouldering wildfires

Huang

Rein

2016

Science of The Total Environment

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Vegetation, wildfire and atmospheric oxygen on Earth have changed throughout geological times, and are dependent on each other, determining the evolution of ecosystems, the carbon cycle, and the climate, as found in the fossil record. Previous work in the literature has only studied flaming wildfires, but smouldering is the most persistent type of fire phenomena, consuming large amounts of biomass. In this study, the dependence of smouldering fires in peatlands, the largest wildfires on Earth, with atmospheric oxygen is investigated. A physics-based computational model of reactive porous media is developed which was previously validated against experiments. Simulations are conducted for wide ranges of atmospheric oxygen concentrations and fuel moisture contents to find thresholds for ignition and extinction. Results show that the predicted rate of spread increases in oxygen-rich atmospheres, while it decreases over wetter fuels. A novel nonlinear relationship between critical oxygen and critical moisture is found. More importantly, we show that compared to previous work on flaming fires, smouldering fires can be ignited and sustained at a substantially higher moisture content (> 100%), and at a substantially lower oxygen concentration (∼ 12%). This defines a possible lower oxygen threshold for wildfire and could help interpret the char remains and paleo fire activities seen in the fossil record.

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Release of Black Carbon From Thawing Permafrost Estimated by Sequestration Fluxes in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf Recipient

Salvadó

Bröder

Andersson

et al. 2017

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

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Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in carbon burial in marine sediments globally. Yet the sequestration of BC in the Arctic Ocean is poorly understood. Here we assess the concentrations, fluxes, and sources of soot BC (SBC)—the most refractory component of BC—in sediments from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), the World's largest shelf sea system. SBC concentrations in the contemporary shelf sediments range from 0.1 to 2.1 mg g−1 dw, corresponding to 2–12% of total organic carbon. The 210Pb‐derived fluxes of SBC (0.42–11 g m−2 yr−1) are higher or in the same range as fluxes reported for marine surface sediments closer to anthropogenic emissions. The total burial flux of SBC in the ESAS (~4,000 Gg yr−1) illustrates the great importance of this Arctic shelf in marine sequestration of SBC. The radiocarbon signal of the SBC shows more depleted yet also more uniform signatures (−721 to −896‰; average of −774 ± 62‰) than of the non‐SBC pool (−304 to −728‰; average of −491 ± 163‰), suggesting that SBC is coming from an, on average, 5,900 ± 300 years older and more specific source than the non‐SBC pool. We estimate that the atmospheric BC input to the ESAS is negligible (~0.6% of the SBC burial flux). Statistical source apportionment modeling suggests that the ESAS sedimentary SBC is remobilized by thawing of two permafrost carbon (PF/C) systems: surface soil permafrost (topsoil/PF; 25 ± 8%) and Pleistocene ice complex deposits (ICD/PF; 75 ± 8%). The SBC contribution to the total mobilized permafrost carbon (PF/C) increases with increasing distance from the coast (from 5 to 14%), indicating that the SBC is more recalcitrant than other forms of translocated PF/C. These results elucidate for the first time the key role of permafrost thaw in the transport of SBC to the Arctic Ocean. With ongoing global warming, these findings have implications for the biogeochemical carbon cycle, increasing the size of this refractory carbon pool in the Arctic Ocean.

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The severity of smouldering peat fires and damage to the forest soil

Cited by 285 publications

References 18 publications

Capillary Water Rise in Peat Soil as Affected by Various Groundwater Levels

Capillary Water Rise in Peat Soil as Affected by Various Groundwater Levels

Interactions of Earth's atmospheric oxygen and fuel moisture in smouldering wildfires

Release of Black Carbon From Thawing Permafrost Estimated by Sequestration Fluxes in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf Recipient

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