Integrating Historic Patterns of Wildfire, Emissions, and Climate for Siberia as a Basis for Estimating the Impacts of Fire on Carbon Cycling, Quantifying Past Fire/Climate Interactions, and Projecting Future Fire/Climate Change Impacts
Susan
Conard, US Forest Service, sgconard@aol.com
(Presenting)
Wei
Min
Hao, US Forest Service, whao@fs.fed.us
Douglas
McRae, Natural Resources Canada, doug.mcrae@nrcan.gc.ca
William
de Groot, Natural Resources Canada, bill.degroot@nrcan.gc.ca
Brian
Stocks, B.J. Stocks Wildfire Investigations Ltd., brianstocks@sympatico.ca
Amber
Soja, National Institute of Aerospace, amber.j.soja@nasa.gov
Thomas
Swetnam, University of Arizona, tswetnam@ltrr.arizona.edu
Richard
Birdsey, US Forest Service, rbirdsey@fs.fed.us
Galina
Ivanova, Sukachev Institute of Forest Research, gaivanova@ksc.krasn.ru
Anatoly
Sukhinin, Sukachev Institute of Forest Research, boss@ksc.krasn.ru
Nadja
Tchebakova, Sukachev Institute of Forest Reearch, ncheby@ksc.krasn.ru
Elena
Parfenova, Sukachev Institute of Forest Research, lyeti@ksc.krasn.ru
The circumpolar boreal zone has global significance in terms of climate change impacts and carbon storage. Wildfires are the dominant disturbance regime, burning 10 to 25 million hectares per year. These fires are a major source of CO2, as well as other greenhouse gases and aerosols. Fire activity and emissions are projected to increase substantially in the boreal zone as climate warms. Projecting the impacts of changing climate on future fire regimes and the interactions of fire with carbon storage and atmospheric chemistry under a changing climate requires baseline data on fire activity that can be coupled with weather data and emission data to quantify past fire effects. This information can then be linked to outputs of climate models and projections of potential future vegetation change to predict future burned areas, fire severity and impacts on carbon storage, carbon emissions, atmospheric chemistry and climate. We will combine recent MODIS satellite data (2001-2008) with fire records reconstructed from archived AVHRR satellite imagery for 1980-1995 to develop a 30-yr fire record for Siberia. We will integrate these data with historic fire weather, emissions data, and vegetation data to estimate fuel consumption, fire severity, and emissions from fires in Siberia from 1980 to 2010. In addition, we propose using dendrochronology data to develop spatially-explicit reconstructions of past burned areas for selected sub-regions for at least the past 200 years. These data will provide insight into historic regional-scale fire/climate relationships and will allow us to place the 30-year satellite-based data in context of longer time scales. The historical relationships derived through this work will provide a basis for projecting the future effects of changing climate on fire patterns, emissions and carbon cycle in Siberia.
Presentation Type: Poster
Poster Session: Carbon Cycle Science
NASA TE Funded Awards Represented:
Hao, Wei Min
Integrating Historic Patterns of Wildfire, Emissions, and Integrating Historic Patterns of Wildfire, Emissions, and Climate for Siberia as a Basis for Estimating the Impacts of Fire on Carbon Cycling, Quantifying Past Fire/Climate Interactions, and Projec