Carbon emissions from fires in permafrost peatlands
- 1Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (s.s.n.veraverbeke@vu.nl)
- 2Department of Ecology and Genetics, Plant Ecology and Evolution, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
- 3V.N. Sukachev Institute of Forest, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Krasnoyarsk, Russia
- 4Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA
- 5Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
- 6Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA
Increases in arctic and boreal fires can switch these biomes from a long-term carbon (C) sink to a source through direct fire emissions and longer-term emissions from soil respiration. Landscapes of intermediate drainage tend to experience the highest C combustion, dominated by soil C emissions, because of relatively thick and periodically dry organic soils. These landscapes may also induce a climate warming feedback through combustion and post-fire respiration of legacy C – soil C that had escaped burning in the previous fire – including from permafrost thaw and degradation. Data shortages from fires in tundra ecosystems and Eurasian boreal forests limit our understanding of C emissions from arctic-boreal fires. Interactions between fire, topography, vegetation, soil and permafrost need to be considered when estimating climate feedbacks of arctic-boreal fires.
How to cite: Veraverbeke, S., Delcourt, C., Granath, G., Kukavskaya, E., Mack, M., Strengbom, J., Walker, X., Hessilt, T., Rogers, B., and Scholten, R.: Carbon emissions from fires in permafrost peatlands, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2355, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2355, 2021.
