Project Funding: 2015 - 2019

NRA: 2014 NASA: Terrestrial Ecology   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Recent changes in climate including earlier springs, longer summers and changes in moisture patterns across the landscape, are affecting wildfire regimes of the Arctic-boreal region including intensity, severity and frequency of wildfires. During the summer of 2014, a record breaking year of wildfire occurred (3.4 million hectares) in the southern part of the Northwest Territories of Canada (NWT). The 2014 fires traversed gradients of ecozones, permafrost zones, ecosystem types, severity of burn and seasons of fire. The proposed project addresses questions about the vulnerability and resiliency of these NWT ecosystems to climate change including: 1) What are the controls on spatial and temporal variations in fire severity?; 2) Do fire effects (hydrology and revegetation) vary across different ecological zones and permafrost conditions?; and 3) Are pre-season fuel moisture patterns indicative of potential wildfire extent, severity and distribution? By studying a range of sites stratified across these gradients of biotic and abiotic factors we will improve our understanding of the vulnerability of a variety of ecosystems to wildfire, fire behavior, C consumption/emissions and the trajectories of succession that will ensue. This is particularly important for peatland ecosystems with deep organic soil profiles which are estimated to cover more than 75% of the southern NWT landscape, but also for determining thresholds that may change successional trajectories. Permafrost is the second most prevalent disturbance factor after wildfire in northern latitudes. There is evidence that climate change is exacerbating both wildfire and permafrost and the feedbacks between them. The diverse landscape of southern NWT allows us to evaluate the effects of both wildfire and permafrost thaw across 3 permafrost zones from sporadic to continuous. The proposed work builds from two previous NASA TE projects, Grant #NNX09AM15G to consider the impacts of climate change on the vulnerability of boreal peatlands to fire and a one year NASA Rapid Response grant #NNX15AD58G that is focused on capturing the time critical field and remote sensing data in summer 2015, within 1 year of the NWT fires. The previous peatland project was focused on central Alberta where wildfires occurred only in spring during the period of study (2009-2014). This lack of seasonality of wildfire limited the analysis to conditions when water tables are typically high and burn severity typically low. Further, the previous project revealed important data gaps for understanding C emissions from peatlands. The proposed project will leverage these two previous projects to improve our understanding of the vulnerability and resiliency of boreal ecosystems to wildfire and the interaction with permfrost thaw. Field and remote sensing data will be collected for mapping peatlands, wetlands, uplands, burn severity to the surface organic layers, soil moisture pre- and post-fire, revegetation, fuel consumption, fire-progression, and permafrost condition to characterize the fire effects and response in a cross section of these fire-disturbed sites. Time critical data will be collected in the summer of 2015, within one year of the events through the Rapid Response grant. Under the proposed ABoVE project, we plan to analyze the data collected in 2015 and continue the study through remote sensing and field analysis to monitor the longer term effects of wildfire on this diverse landscape through 2018. This proposed project will continue to develop a better understanding of our changing climate, the impacts it has on our boreal-taiga ecosystems and fire behavior. This proposal directly addresses the overarching science question for ABoVE on how vulnerable or resilient are ecosystems to environmental change in the Arctic-boreal region of western North America with a focus on wildfire, which is the most prevalent disturbance factor in the north.

Publications:

Bourgeau-Chavez, L. L., Endres, S., Powell, R., Battaglia, M. J., Benscoter, B., Turetsky, M., Kasischke, E. S., Banda, E. 2017. Mapping boreal peatland ecosystem types from multitemporal radar and optical satellite imagery. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 47(4), 545-559. DOI: 10.1139/cjfr-2016-0192

Bourgeau-Chavez, L. L., Graham, J. A., Vander Bilt, D. J. L., Battaglia, M. J. 2022. Assessing the broadscale effects of wildfire under extreme drought conditions to boreal peatlands. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. 5. DOI: 10.3389/ffgc.2022.965605

Bourgeau-Chavez, L. L., Grelik, S. L., Billmire, M., Jenkins, L. K., Kasischke, E. S., Turetsky, M. R. 2020. Assessing Boreal Peat Fire Severity and Vulnerability of Peatlands to Early Season Wildland Fire. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. 3. DOI: 10.3389/ffgc.2020.00020

Campbell, A. D., Fatoyinbo, T., Charles, S. P., Bourgeau-Chavez, L. L., Goes, J., Gomes, H., Halabisky, M., Holmquist, J., Lohrenz, S., Mitchell, C., Moskal, L. M., Poulter, B., Qiu, H., Resende De Sousa, C. H., Sayers, M., Simard, M., Stewart, A. J., Singh, D., Trettin, C., Wu, J., Zhang, X., Lagomasino, D. 2022. A review of carbon monitoring in wet carbon systems using remote sensing. Environmental Research Letters. 17(2), 025009. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac4d4d

Clayton, L. K., Schaefer, K., Battaglia, M. J., Bourgeau-Chavez, L., Chen, J., Chen, R. H., Chen, A., Bakian-Dogaheh, K., Grelik, S., Jafarov, E., Liu, L., Michaelides, R. J., Moghaddam, M., Parsekian, A. D., Rocha, A. V., Schaefer, S. R., Sullivan, T., Tabatabaeenejad, A., Wang, K., Wilson, C. J., Zebker, H. A., Zhang, T., Zhao, Y. 2021. Active layer thickness as a function of soil water content. Environmental Research Letters. 16(5), 055028. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abfa4c

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile
• North American Carbon Program (NACP) Project Profile
• NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) Project Profile