Document

Title

Quantifying fire severity, carbon, and nitrogen emissions in Alaska's boreal forest
Document Type: Journal Article
Author(s): Leslie A. Boby; Edward A. G. Schuur; Michelle C. Mack; David L. Verbyla; Jill F. Johnstone
Publication Year: 2010

Cataloging Information

Keyword(s):
  • adventitious roots
  • air quality
  • allometric equations
  • biomass
  • black spruce
  • black spruce
  • boreal forests
  • carbon
  • carbon emissions
  • catastrophic fires
  • combustion
  • diameter classes
  • fire intensity
  • fire management
  • forest fire
  • forest management
  • forest types
  • nitrogen
  • nitrogen
  • organic layer depth
  • organic soils
  • Picea
  • Picea mariana
  • Picea mariana
  • roots
  • soil carbon
  • soil management
  • soil nutrients
  • soil organic matter
  • soils
  • spruce
  • stand characteristics
  • surface fuel consumption
  • surface fuels
  • trees
  • wildfires
Topic(s):
Region(s):
Record Maintained By:
TTRS Staff; https://talltimbers.org/contact-us
Record Last Modified: November 6, 2019
FRAMES Record Number: 48866
Tall Timbers Record Number: 25096
TTRS Location Status: In-file
TTRS Call Number: Journals - E
TTRS Abstract Status: Fair use, Okay, Reproduced by permission

This bibliographic record was either created or modified by the Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy and is provided without charge to promote research and education in Fire Ecology. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database is the intellectual property of the Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy.

Description

The boreal region stores a large proportion of the world's terrestrial carbon (C) and is subject to high-intensity, stand-replacing wildfires that release C and nitrogen (N) stored in biomass and soils through combustion. While severity and extent of fires drives overall emissions, methods for accurately estimating fire severity are poorly tested in this unique region where organic soil combustion is responsible for a large proportion of total emissions. We tested a method using adventitious roots on black spruce trees (Picea mariana) in combination with canopy allometry to reconstruct prefire organic soil layers and canopy biomass in boreal black spruce forests of Alaska (USA), thus providing a basis for more accurately quantifying fire severity levels. We calibrated this adventitious-root-height method in unburned spruce stands and then tested it by comparing our biomass and soils estimates reconstructed in burned stands with actual prefire stand measurements. We applied this approach to 38 black spruce stands burned in 2004 in Alaska, where we measured organic soil and stand characteristics and estimated the amount of soil and canopy biomass, as well as C and N pools, consumed by fire. These high-intensity quantitative estimates of severity were significantly correlated to a semiquantitative visual rapid assessment tool, the composite burn index (CBI). This index has proved useful for assessing fire severity in forests in the western United States but has not yet been widely tested in the boreal forest. From our study, we conclude that using postfire measurements of adventitious roots on black spruce trees in combination with soils and tree data can be used to reconstruct prefire organic soil depths and biomass pools, providing accurate estimates of fire severity and emissions. Furthermore, using our quantitative reconstruction we show that CBI is a reasonably good predictor of biomass and soil C loss at these sites, and it shows promise for rapidly estimating fire severity across a wide range of boreal black spruce forest types, especially where the use of high-intensity measurements may be limited by cost and time. © 2010 by the Ecological Society of America. Abstract reproduced by permission.

Citation:
Boby, L. A., E. A. G. Schuur, M. C. Mack, D. Verbyla, and J. F. Johnstone. 2010. Quantifying fire severity, carbon, and nitrogen emissions in Alaska's boreal forest. Ecological Applications, v. 20, no. 6, p. 1633-1647.