Fire is a fundamental Earth system process and the primary ecosystem disturbance on the global scale. It affects carbon and water cycles through changing terrestrial ecosystems, and at the same time, is regulated by weather and climate, vegetation characteristics, and, importantly, human ignitions and suppression (i.e., the direct...
Author(s): Fang Li, David M. Lawrence, Ben Bond-Lamberty
Year Published: 2018
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Fire is a dynamic ecological process in forests and impacts the carbon (C) cycle through direct combustion emissions, tree mortality, and by impairing the ability of surviving trees to sequester carbon. While studies on young trees have demonstrated that fire intensity is a determinant of post-fire net primary productivity, wildland...
Author(s): Aaron M. Sparks, Crystal A. Kolden, Alistair M. S. Smith, Luigi Boschetti, Daniel M. Johnson, Mark A. Cochrane
Year Published: 2018
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Biomass energy produced as a byproduct of forest clearing is increasingly being advocated in the western United States as a “win-win” for reducing fire risks and replacing fossil fuels. Many assumptions that justify thinning and biomass approaches, however, need to be substantiated to determine whether they are in fact ecologically...
Author(s): Dominick A. DellaSala, M. Koopman
Year Published: 2018
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Trembling aspen covers a large geographic range in North America, and previous studies reported that a better understanding of its singular influence on soil properties and processes is of high relevance for global change questions. Here we investigate the potential impact of a shift in aspen abundance on soil carbon sequestration...
Author(s): Jérôme Laganière, Antra Boča, Helga Van Miegroet, David Paré
Year Published: 2017
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Mechanical site preparation is assumed to reduce soil C stocks by increasing the rate at which the displaced organic material decomposes, but the evidence is equivocal. We measured rates of C loss of forest-floor material in mesh bags either placed on the surface or buried in the mineral soil at four sites in different regional...
Author(s): Cindy E. Prescott, Anya Reid, Shu Yao Wu, Marie-Charlotte Nilsson
Year Published: 2017
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Forest restoration often includes thinning to reduce tree density and improve ecosystem processes and function while also reducing the risk of wildfire or insect and disease outbreaks. However, one drawback of these restoration treatments is that slash is often burned in piles that may damage the soil and require further restoration...
Author(s): Deborah S. Page-Dumroese, Matt Busse, Jim Archuleta, Darren McAvoy, Eric Roussel
Year Published: 2017
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Forest ecosystems can act as sinks of carbon and thus mitigate anthropogenic carbon emissions. When forests are actively managed, treatments can alter forests carbon dynamics, reducing their sink strength and switching them from sinks to sources of carbon. These effects are generally characterized by fast temporal dynamics. Hence...
Author(s): Sabina Dore, Danny L. Fry, Brandon M. Collins, Rodrigo Vargas, Robert A. York, Scott L. Stephens
Year Published: 2016
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Non-deforestation fire – i.e., fire that is typically followed by the recovery of natural vegetation – is arguably the most influential disturbance in terrestrial ecosystems, thereby playing a major role in carbon exchanges and affecting many climatic processes. The radiative effect from a given atmospheric CO2 perturbation is the...
Author(s): Jean-Sebastien Landry, H. Damon Matthews
Year Published: 2016
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Wildfire can impose a direct impact on human health under climate change. While the potential impacts of climate change on wildfires and resulting air pollution have been studied, it is not known who will be most affected by the growing threat of wildfires. Identifying communities that will be most affected will inform development...
Author(s): Jia Coco Liu, Loretta J. Mickley, Melissa P. Sulprizio, Francesca Dominici, Xu Yue, Keita Ebisu, Georgiana Brooke Anderson, Rafi F.A. Khan, Mercedes Bravo, Michelle L. Bell
Year Published: 2016
Type: Document :
Book or Chapter or Journal Article Regional air quality simulations were performed to evaluate the contributions of wildland fires to inter-annual variability of black carbon (BC) concentrations and to assess the contributions of wildfires vs. prescribed fires to BC concentrations and deposition rates to glacier areas and snow-covered surfaces in the western US....
Author(s): Serena H. Chung, Brian K. Lamb, Farren Herron-Thorpe, Rodrigo Gonzalez-Abraham, Vikram Ravi, Tsengel Nergui, Joseph K. Vaughan, Narasimhan K. Larkin, Tara Strand
Year Published: 2015
Type: Document :
Technical Report or White Paper